Between the Dog and the Wolf
by AmZ
Summary: A month after the barricades fall, Valjean finds himself in the middle of a mystery. Violence, language, mild sexuality. Part of the 'You Know Nothing of Javert' series. COMPLETE, after 6 years. Not the worst first novel I could've written. 4-05-13: AO3 update.
1. Ch 1

Author's Note: The songs in the story are not mine - I translated and re- worked some "street" songs popular in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 60s.

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2nd AUTHOR'S NOTE: This fic, although complete, is currently undergoing EDITING and REWRITING over on **Archive of Our Own**.

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**This version is the first version. To read the NEW, updated version IN PROGRESS, head over to AO3 and look for _"Between the Dog and the Wolf (new version)"_**

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Otherwise, enjoy!

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_Would you know the dog from the wolf? You may look at his paw,  
Comparing the claw and the pad; you may measure his stride,  
You may handle his coat and his ears; you may study his jaw;  
And yet what you seek is not found in his bones or his hide,  
For between the Dog and the Wolf there is only the Law._

_- Poul Anderson_

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„As for me, I still have many visits to make,  
So draw your curtains, so check your latches!"

Only sheer willpower kept Valjean from spilling wine into his lap.

„You may think you are safe with your doorman and dog  
You may think leaving lights on will keep you;  
But I've already taken a print of your lock..."

The singing was coming from behind a wooden support beam about three tables away. Thick plumes of tobacco smoke and turned down lanterns veiled much of the goings-on around him, but Valjean found that if he skewed his eyes enough to the right, he could observe two men sitting under the fly-dotted portrait of Jean de La Fontaine near the bar; or rather, he could observe the back of one man and the profile of the other. The one who sat with his back to Valjean was bent over a plate and had two wine-bottles standing in front of him. The other one sat on the high, narrow steps leading to a locked door, probably the entrance to the provisions cellar, and sang in a playful, but low voice, punctuating some sentences with aggressive guitar chords.

"Shaking branches were all that you saw and you heard,  
From your bed, where you prayed, wept, and trembled..."

The deep, guttural timbre of the singer's voice was unmistakable. Valjean felt that he was going mad. The desire to turn his head and confirm the terrible truth was overwhelming, but Valjean called to power all of his self-control and remained as he was. In his head, a piece of nonsense rolled around like a pebble in a clay jug: one person more, one person less, one person more, one person less.

Ten paces behind him sat Javert.

Ten paces behind him sat Javert, and he was singing a thief song.

Valjean's mind flashed back to the article in the Moniteur. Body found under a boat. Irreproachable public servant. A writing left behind at the station on Place du Chatelet. A fit of mental aberration and suicide. So why was this irreproachable suicide singing thief lore in a _guinguette_ near the Fontainebleau barriere?

Javert's voice barely carried over the near-deafening clamor and chatter; Valjean had to strain to hear the words. Every so often, a mug would get slammed against the table somewhere to the side, showering a company with beer, or roars of savage laughter would tear out of several tobacco-scraped gullets at once and cover for a few moments all other sounds. Waitresses bustled between tables, constantly blocking the singer and his companion from Valjean's furtive observation.

The song was ended with two forceful chords, which apparently finally won the attention of Javert's pie-eyed neighbors: there were a few shouts of appreciation and someone's unsteady hand reached toward Javert with a glass. Javert accepted with a smile and took a small polite sip. His companion must've said something to him, because Javert looked up at him and nodded into the glass. Setting the unfinished wine onto the low table, he lowered his head and began to re-tune the guitar with swift, precise motions. The process took a surprisingly long time: the strings must've been of poor quality. Then Javert tossed his head, shaking a loose strand of hair out of his eyes, and set to singing another well-known thief tune, this time a sad one:

"Such is the fate and fortune of a thief;  
One wants a plain and finds a wall instead;  
Though we part forevermore with freedom,  
Even then our brother never hangs his head."

Valjean had heard the song before. When a new man was rotated into a chain gang in Toulon, and the group felt reluctant to accept him, they would wait to voice their concerns until he sang something. One can tell a lot about a man by the songs he sings under duress. This was one of the songs almost guaranteed to win respect from the old-timers, provided it was sung with the appropriate intonations and accents. Javert sang it perfectly. His "a's" were drawled, his "o's" were muted, and the emphasis was correctly misplaced in the important words. There was even a hint of slightly hysterical sarcasm behind the lines, which only served to enhance the illusion that the singer was, as the thieves said, fresh from the "hospital" and recovering from a long "illness."

"It may be that life prepares a quietus for me;  
A ray of sun streaks the sky but rarely.  
Darling, crows are useless to a trapper;  
Only nightingales and finches sit in cages."

This time the surrounding tables remained far quieter and, when the final melancholy notes died away, rewarded the singer with fairly deafening applause and whistles. Javert inclined his head modestly, but the attention seemed to please him, because he suddenly stood up from the stairs - Valjean felt his insides congeal into a ball of ice – and shifted to a high stool near the bar, making himself more visible to the public. Applause and hoots of encouragement started up in the farther tables as well. Someone shouted a single hoarse oath, and then a few words in a patois Valjean did not understand.

Javert, who was once again busy re-tuning his guitar, calmly responded with another incomprehensible phrase, apparently in the same language. The loudmouthed customer burst into laughter, along with the rest of his tablemates.

Careful not move too suddenly and not to make any noise, lest he attract Javert's gaze, Valjean pushed his chair back until he was sitting at the table closest to the wall. The man already sitting there paid no heed to his new table companion. He held his stubbly chin in his hands and grinned around a still-smoking pipe, watching Javert fiddle with the guitar.

"He has a nice voice," remarked Valjean, feeling the waters cautiously as Javert started to play something again - this time, a tune without words.

The smoker said nothing but raised his thick black eyebrows and tightened his mouth in a grimace of assent.

Valjean waited patiently to see if anything more informative was forthcoming. But his interlocutor must have felt that he expressed himself with sufficient clarity and offered nothing else.

The situation was saved by a waitress, who approached Valjean's old table with a new bottle and a plate of cheese and bread and paused, looking around for her customer. Valjean signaled to her to bring his order to the new table and slipped her a silver coin. The waitress curtsied deeply and silently and left, slipping her hand discretely under her stained apron and tucking the coin someplace on her dress.

"Your health," said Valjean to his neighbour, filling up the glass in front of him.

"Thank you, dear sir," suddenly said the neighbour, tipping the rest of the bottle into his own glass. "Yes, a toast is definitely in order."

"Oh?" offered Valjean innocently, holding the glass near his mouth.

The man turned to him and sighed. "Such a day. Your health!"

They drank.

"How long have you been with the Surete?" asked the man, wiping his mouth.

"Not long," lied Valjean smoothly. "To be honest, I don't even know what the occasion is."

"Ah, so they sent you a plain one as well."

The man reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a familiar cream card with printed black lettering.

Valjean squinted, then pulled out the card he himself received in the post two days earlier and put it on the table next to the man's. The two cards were identical, save for one detail: the hand-written number in the top right hand corner of Valjean's card read "01-30," while the stranger's read "17."

"I hear they sent gold-embossed ones to the veterans," said the man with apparent envy. Valjean once again looked over the cards. Both gave the address of the place, date, and time - "between eight and nine in the evening." That was it.

He stretched out his hand. "May I?"

"By all means," allowed the stranger.

Valjean turned both cards over. The strange emblem on the back was also the same: a heater shield with an elegant silhouette of a howling wolf and below it, a puzzling device: "_Melius in umbra pugnabimus_."

Valjean sat back in his chair and glanced once more at Javert, who appeared to be deep in conversation with some barrel-chested brunet dressed in the tan jacket of a river-docks strongman on holiday. The man kept leaning down close to whisper into Javert's ear, and each time Javert tossed his head back and laughed, flashing both rows of even white teeth.

"What is your guess? Why have we been called?" asked Valjean, hoping the stranger would bite this time.

The man shrugged. "I think they probably finalized the decision with regards to the General. Otherwise why bring so many of us in at once?"

Heaving a mental groan of frustration, Valjean nodded casual assent and reached for the bottle again.


	2. Ch 2

The human mind has rather peculiar mechanisms for dealing with great shock.

A man goes to bed and dreams that he had become a gargoyle on the bell- tower of Notre-Dame. In this dream he wants to button his coat to protect himself from the piercing winds; however, no matter how hard he tries to push the buttons through the button-holes, he does not succeed. In the morning he wakes up tired, chilled, and supremely frustrated - not at having spent a cold night as a gargoyle on Notre-Dame, but at not having been able to perform such an ordinary and casual maneuver as buttoning his coat!

It would be an understatement to say that Valjean was surprised to see the Inspector alive and well after having read his necrology in the _Moniteur_. Valjean's nature was far too impressionable, one might even say puerile to react so mildly. The old man was completely floored. And because the human mind can only take so much excitement at one time, Valjean's attention became fixated on the sole detail that seemed safe to analyze and ponder as he observed his own personal Nemesis re-tune the guitar in his lap.

Javert was in a state of profound _déshabillé_.

In all the time that Valjean had worked side by side with Javert in M.-sur-M., he had never seen him so much as undo the collar of his coat in public. Now the man was practically undressed. Both the short blue jacket and the red vest were thrown open; his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow, exposing surprisingly dark and thin arms. Add to this olive velveteen trousers, a loosely knotted red cravat, and a dark red waist-wrap, and Javert looked no different from any other laborer in the cafe. Only his boots spoiled the impression somewhat: they were almost knee-high and made of soft leather, in the style which used to be very popular among dragoons in days of the Empire. The military tint they added to the ensemble made its overall negligence appear somehow illusory, like the necessary disarray of a bivouacking soldier.

As Valjean watched the late Inspector of the First Class Javert exchange greetings, hand clasps, and even embraces with the men who were fast filling up the room, he realized, somewhat to his surprise, that he no longer wondered how Javert came back to life, or whether he died at all, or whether he was really Javert and not some clever impersonator - although how clever could someone be if they tried to impersonate the fearsome and austere inspector Javert by playing guitar and singing prison songs?

Now he only found Javert's outfit strange.

"I think it's ridiculous that they are turning the General out," said the neighbor, tactfully pinching a slice of Valjean's bread from the platter.

"Hmm," offered Valjean without turning his head. The vague tone could have meant anything from light skepticism to tacit agreement.

The neighbor took it for agreement.

"I mean, I have nothing against the Pharaoh, mind you, except that he is not the General, you know? I'd understand if our Mec had wanted to retire, mind you, then there'd be no argument - the Pharaoh is his heir, no one's arguing with it. But to throw a man out of his own organization after three and twenty years of perfect service, and that while he's still fit and willing to do his duty? It's plain unfair if you ask me."

"Oh, quite!" said Valjean, shaking his head with not entirely fake discomfort. Talk of firing innocent people did not sit well with him.

The man sighed and sunk his chin back into his hand like an odd parody of Raphael's contemplative cherub.

"I suppose it won't be so bad. The General wouldn't simply off and abandon us. He'll be around if we need him."

Valjean felt a tic stealing over left cheek and squeezed his eyes shut to kill it on arrival. His table-mate interpreted it in his own way.

"Oh, there now, really, it won't be so bad, I'm sure. The Pharaoh knows what he's doing."

Even through the haze of confusion and frustration, Valjean felt an odd warmth towards the man for being so ready to contradict himself just to make a stranger feel better.

"Have you talked to him yet? I haven't. Can't work up the courage."

"How come?" asked Valjean with a touch of genuine curiosity.

The man chuckled and moaned, "Oh, it's stupid, really. It's just that he is going to recognize me, you know? I used to be in his ward about twenty years ago and... well, I was young, lonely, in distress... I... I may have caused offense. Anyway, it's all ancient history now. But still, he would recognize me, you know, and I do not want to make him uncomfortable."

'Seems to me you're the one who's uncomfortable here,' thought Valjean.

"I'm sure he has put it out of his mind by now," he said amiably.

"You're probably right. Still... I'd rather not face him until it's inevitable, you know?"

Valjean nodded and started building his own sandwich. Thankfully, the room was now so crowded and full of noise that it was perfectly justifiable to restrict one's responses to nods and headshakes.

"What about you? What's your story?"

The question caught Valjean with his mouth full, for which he was profoundly grateful.

"You must be one of the infantry, like myself. Are you new? I have never seen you on assignment. Whose group are you in?"

"I am afraid I am not at liberty to say," blurted out Valjean, hoping his voice didn't sound as unsure and squeaky to his interlocutor as it did to him.

The man nodded.

"In the middle of something, eh? I figured as much. Then I suppose you'll be leaving right after the Pharaoh makes the address."

"Yes, yes, it would be for the best. When do you think he will start?"

"Not until the General shows up, certainly. Although he may already be in the back room, I am not sure. In that case, they may start quite soon." The man scratched his chin absentmindedly. "I am not being of much help, am I?"

'No, you're certainly not,' silently agreed Valjean, although the stranger's comical self-deprecation made him smile.

"You could go ask him yourself, of course," said the man.

"Ask whom?"

"What do you mean, 'whom,' the man who'll be doing the talking, naturally!"

Valjean followed the man's pointed finger and found himself looking directly into Javert's face. Javert was grinning.


	3. Ch 3

Author's Note: I stopped worrying about plot and characterisation and such truck. Now I'm just writing to see where the characters will take the story.

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Giving a mild shove to the chest to a happy drunk trying to embrace him, Javert inclined his head briefly in the direction of an empty stool next to his own. The wide grin rendered his face nearly unrecognizable. Valjean was sure he'd never seen a human being show so many teeth at once. There was as much threat to that grin as there was geniality - perhaps even more.

Valjean took a deep breath and stood up from the table, pushing back his chair.

"It was nice talking to you," he said, giving his already slightly tipsy neighbor a polite bow.

The man saluted him heartily with a half-filled glass.

"Any time, my good man, any time at all! Any friend of the Pharaoh, and all that."

Keeping his eyes fixed on the floor, Valjean negotiated his way through the forest of chairs, tables, and square wooden columns enshrouded in dense blue fog of tobacco smoke. A couple of times he almost tripped on someone's stretched out legs and accepted casual apologies; then he himself inadvertently pushed a young man in a worn frock coat, who dropped his fork with a skewered steaming morsel onto the table, and had to offer apologies of his own.

The cafe bustled around him. Dishes, mugs, and pipes clanged against the bare tabletops; jackets and frocks rustled; chairs scooted back and forth on the dirt floor. Someone, perhaps a waitress, lit another lamp in the corner where he was just sitting. Valjean instinctively turned his head towards the new source of light and frowned: the chair belonging to his enigmatic neighbor was now also vacant.

He had wanted to stop two paces away from Javert's stool, but a short man with a brown leathery face chose that exact moment to leave his seat, forcing Valjean to move out of his way and almost directly into Javert's arms.

Javert didn't seem to notice any of this maneuvering. He was once again engrossed in re-tuning his guitar, throwing sulky glances now at the soundboard now at the fingerboard, turning the keys awkwardly with the stiff, unbending fingers of his right hand and cautiously plucking at the strings with his left. When the guitar finally produced a sound to his satisfaction, Javert looked up and discovered Valjean right in front of him. The older man wore the sombre expression of an innocent man condemned to hang.

"Go on, take a seat." Javert nodded to the empty stool once again. "I'm not rushing anywhere. And neither are you, I suspect. Go, sit."

Dumbly obeying the request, Valjean lowered himself onto the stool and placed his elbow on the counter top, which looked to be brand new. Immediately, a barman with a mess of dark rat-nest hair sprang up from behind the counter, like a jack-in-the-box.

"What would monsieur desire to drink?" he said, flashing Valjean the nervous, apologetic smile of a very polite man distracted from very important work.

Valjen floundered. "Uhm..."

"Monsieur would desire a glass of red Anjou-Villages," answered Javert in his stead, without looking away from the tuning keys. "And I would like some more grog. Two shots this time, extra lime, hold the cinnamon."

The barman was already digging around under the counter and arranging various goodies on the shiny metal counter-top: a tall, dusty bottle with dark red wine; a much shorter and flatter flagon with rum; half of a slightly wilted lime; a cutting board with a knife; and a jar with cinnamon sticks. Upon hearing Javert's last specification, he moved to place the jar back under the counter but Valjean stopped him. He still couldn't collect himself after hearing his intended order issue so matter-of-factly from Javert's mouth.

"Thank you, Michel," saidd Javert, carefully maneuvering the guitar off his shoulder but getting it caught briefly on his ponytail nonetheless. After deliberating for a moment, he laid it flat on the counter-top. Reaching for the glass which the barman had just finished topping off with boiling water from a large tea-kettle, he caught Valjean's eyes for a second and confided to him with a small sigh, as if to a bosom friend:

"These new strings are shit."

He then breathed a little into the glass and took a cautious sip. "What?" he asked over the rim of the glass, raising an eyebrow at Valjean's vexed look.

"How did you know I liked Anjou-Villages?"

Javert half-shrugged and drank some more. "I don't recall you ever drinking anything else when we occasioned to dine together in Montreuil."

For a minute or so, they sipped in silence.

'Why are you not dead?' Valjean wanted to ask, but instead said something completely different:

"Where are your whiskers?"

Javert raised his eyebrow slightly.

"Probably out to sea by now. I take it you don't approve?"

"No, no," assured him Valjean. "You look good without them. Much younger."The words were coming out somewhat indistinct on account of a cinnamon stick in his mouth. Valjean rarely indulged his sweet tooth, but, as his mind insisted somewhat guiltily, this occasion promised enough distress to warrant a little preemptive indulgence. "Why did you shave them off?"

"Is that really the question you want to ask me right now?" replied Javert, folding his left hand around right and leaning a clean-shaven cheek onto the resulting double fist. The pose would have been coquettish, were it not assumed with such an earnest and piercing expression.

"I suppose not," said Valjean. His fingers tightened nervously around the tall glass. He had not noticed himself empty it.

"The short answer is no," said Javert, looking at Valjean intently, as if to gauge his response.

"No?"

"No, I will not turn you in."

Valjean sagged slightly against the counter-top. His heart pounded furiously in his chest.

"Thank you, Javert."

Javert gave the half empty bottle of rum a comically stupefied look.

"Don't mention it," he mumbled to the bottle.

"All right."

"I'm serious. I'm not being altruistic. You'll be working it off."

"Anything you want," said Valjean simply.

"Anything?" Javert raised a lazy eyebrow. "That's a very incautious word, Valjean. What if I asked you to sell your soul to me?"

"Of what use would my soul be to you?"

"No? Well then. How about your body?"

The glass fell from Valjean's hand and shattered on the floor.


	4. Ch 4

Author's Note: From now on, there will probably be a fair amount of argot in the text. I think I'll only translate the less obvious ones, like "_balancer les halenes_," but leave others in French, like _tantes_, that is, homosexuals.

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Javert raised an eyebrow at the shards of glass glistening wetly on the floor.

"Pardieu, man, you must stop associating with whores. It does things to your head, such company," he said, shaking his head and extending a beckoning hand to the mousy, limp-haired creature wiping down the nearest table.

"I do not _associate_ with whores," mumbled Valjean, who felt as if steam was about to start pouring from his ears.

The girl brushed the shards into a little tin dustpan, throwing occasional glances at the older gentleman with the beet-red face and thinking that he looked rather like her little brother whenever maman catches him with his hand down his trousers. She wiped the floor down to a greasy shine with a rag and got a five-sous coin for her efforts from the tall grey-eyed gentleman, who then waved her away.

"No whores, eh? Is it younger girls then?" asked Javert, smirking like Master Fox from a popular illustrated edition of La Fontaine. "No? So what is it? _Tantes_?" he continued, swishing the last of his drink around the glass before finishing it. Valjean blinked at him, disturbed. "_Mômes_?" suggested Javert innocently.

Valjean's unease bloomed into full-blown panic. "Look, don't torment me any more," he implored. "Just say plainly what you want from me."

Javert exchanged a significant look with his tumbler and carefully set it down. A small, monkeyish hand with hairy knuckles scuttled up from behind the counter, felt around with nimble fingers, found the tumbler, and abducted it.

"Three fingers, Michel," said Javert to the invisible bartender, craning his neck slightly. "Actually, just give me the bottle, would you? Why not. Let's have it."

The glass reappeared half-filled with steaming grog. The rum bottle followed. Javert regarded both items for a second but did not reach for either one.

"What I want from you," he said in a softer voice, "Is... To agree to a small job with... The authorities."

The sentence had been punctuated heavily with strangely placed pauses.

"No. Let us be more precise. What I want from you," he continued, addressing the glass with quiet intensity, "that is, for now, is to render me, and therefore the state, a small but significant service. I do not expect it to be very taxing. Though it could potentially cost you your life."

Having made this enigmatic statement, Javert picked up the glass and downed its contents in one resolute gulp.

"Since when do you stand for thieves cooperating with the police?" asked Valjean with bitter suspicion.

"I don't," answered Javert thoughtfully. "For normal thieves, that is. And normal police. But, frankly, I see no alternative in our case. At least none that both of us would find acceptable."

"I get it. I see now. You know I've chucked the tools(1) a long time ago, so you can't find it in you to turn me in, but neither can you let me bugger off, so you decide to make a prison sheep out of me? Frankly, I don't know what's worse: being an honestly recovered horse(2) or a paid agent of the coppers."

In his agitation, Valjean did not notice that he had slipped into argot.

Javert fixed the smaller man with an unblinking stare for a few seconds, then reached into his jacket, pulled a silver-plated watch out of the inner breast pocket, and gave it a brief but meaningful glance.

"Be that as it may, you have approximately twenty minutes to decide between the two."

It was as if all the anger Valjean forbade himself to experience over the past two decades had flooded back in a torrent. Were he a little better composed, Valjean would have probably remarked on how liberating and cathartic this anger felt, at which point a goodly part of it would have momentarily converted to guilt. But he was too furious to remark anything besides Javert's neck. It was dark, he thought, and strangely thin, and with a little bit of effort, he could probably snap it with one hand.

Naturally, this entire thought process showed itself in detail on his rage-contorted face. This seemed to delight Javert to no end.

"None of that, Lisette," he said gaily. "You didn't think I'd hazard talking to you alone, did you? I got a mate here with me."

He moved his jacket open with his left elbow and Valjean caught the metallic glimmer of a pistol barrel under the counter. A faint hope stirred in him.

"You think that little fart-machine scares me?" growled Valjean under his breath. "Do your worst."

"Ah ah ah," said Javert, shaking the pistol at Valjean slightly like a young mother shakes a rosy finger at her naughty first-born. "None of that either. I don't want you dead. And I don't think you really want you dead either. This is why we are having this discussion, remember? To find a solution that will allow us to co-exist in peace. So I'll thank you to stop entertaining murderous and suicidal thoughts for a moment and just sit still for a couple of minutes."

"In about... A quarter of an hour," Javert continued once again in a strange staccato, "I will need the help of an able-bodied man. To assist me in thwarting what could become... A nasty scuffle. That is why I sent you the card. I could probably manage by myself, but then, if something goes wrong... it'll be forty- five by fifteen(3) in here. You know?"

Valjean nodded.

"All I need from you tonight is... To look intimidating and twist some arms... Should it become necessary. I will personally point you to the man, or men, that might need a bit of subduing. Got it?"

Valjean nodded again, keeping his eye on the pistol. There seemed to be something odd about it.

"All you have to do right now - right now, at this time, after I am done speaking - is tell me aye or nay. _Gy ou nibergue_?"

"You will let me alone if I do this?" asked Valjean incredulously. "I can buy my freedom and peace of mind from you with a night's odd job?"

"No," replied Javert with the exaggerated emphasis of strained patience. "The night's odd job will only buy you a night's freedom and peace of mind. The rest of your life is still to be discussed. What I am giving you right now is the opportunity to sit down to the negotiations table with me."

"Why must you make it so complicated? Just look the other way and I'll be out of Paris before the day breaks. I know well how to lie low, don't worry about my safety. You'll be free of me, I'll be free of you, and that'll be the end of the story."

For a few seconds Javert said nothing, but simply sat there staring into Valjean's face.

"Do you honestly believe them?" he finally asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you honestly believe your own lies?"

"How am I lying to you?"

"Forget about me for a moment. You are lying to yourself. Think about it. If I let you walk out of here right now, you will be in prison until the day you die. You may find a strange village in that prison occasionally, or some fields, or a forest, or an unknown face or two, but it will still always be a prison. This is what being a fugitive from law means - a life sentence without possibility of parole or appeal."

Valjean opened his mouth to reply, but found that he had no rejoinder and hung his head.

"Admit it, Valjean," went on Javert. His speech was once again fluid. "You are tired of looking over your shoulder wherever you go. You are tired of suspecting all your acquaintances of feigning friendship just to denounce you later for profit. You are tired of having to take all your walks at night. You are tired of always living on the outskirts of the town. All of this is obvious enough, I think. But do you know what else?"

"What?" said Valjean in a whisper without knowing why.

Javert leaned in close. Valjean smelled rum and cinnamon on his breath and cheap tobacco smoke on his clothes.

"I've recently spent some time thinking about you and your circumstances, and I've come to a conclusion. You are not a criminal at heart, Valjean. Nor a big-wig industrialist, nor a mayor. You are a peasant at heart. You are dying without work, and you can't work. Having escaped from one prison, you locked yourself right away in another. This is how it was for you all these years: you saw firewood at home, you make trinkets for your daughter, you fix the fence even when it doesn't need fixing, you tend to your little kitchen garden. Your walks, when you take them, are usually in the fields, beyond the barriers if possible - away from people. Sometimes you gather up your courage and walk through the quarter to church, or to bestow some brass on the deserving poor- and then dart right back in afterwards. You read a lot of travel tales and adventure stories in your armchair and gaze out the window towards the horizon. But it's just not enough to keep the boredom away, is it?"

"It's not enough," replied Valjean softly, mesmerized by the slight side-to-side movement of Javert's glistening yellowish eyeballs.

"Yes, it's not enough," repeated Javert with quiet intensity. "But how can you work when you are afraid to go out of your house while the sun is up, when you are afraid of being seen by people? You're not a woman to stay up nights sewing."

"You may think to yourself: well, since my daughter is now gone to live with her husband, I can risk it, I can go out. But old habits die hard, Valjean, and I guarantee you - no, I swear it even - that you will be making three-block hooks around every posted _sergeant de ville_ and every _commissaire_'s office for the rest of your life. And you will never dare to light a candle after dark without first coming to the window to watch if the soldier guard is coming around on patrol. And you most certainly will not want to have anything to do with your daughter for fear of besmirching her husband's good name."

"But you have just told me that you will not turn me in," said Valjean.

"Don't play the village idiot with me, Valjean!" hissed Javert. "Yes, I cannot turn you in, but others can!"

"What others?" said Valjean stupidly. Javert rolled his eyes.

"You really are a monster of vanity, Cric. To listen to you, it's all been just a big game between you and me. But you are not my special little secret. The police does not begin and end with me. There are others out looking for you, Valjean. Your arrest warrant is public. I hold no monopoly on it."

"Think about that for a moment. You can be detained," Javert continued in a sibilant whisper, leaning in even closer, "at any hour of the day, on any street corner, by any bobby with a ha'penny worth of sense. It's been your luck that such bobbies are scarce, even in Paris. But there are men in the police who have a wealth more sense."

"The Security Brigade."

Javert pulled back and bared two slightly parted rows of large even teeth.

"Aye, the Surete. Vidocq. A famous man. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him."

"Pssht! Every housewife in France has heard of him. Do you know him personally?"

"No."

"But he knows you, Cric," Javert smirked. "You see, he knows just about every convict in France. He is a man with ten thousand eyes."

"Two of which are yours, I take it."

Javert cocked an eyebrow and saluted the other man with the empty glass.

"Not bad. I knew there was a reason I liked you. But let's return to our muttons. Eight years ago, on your second tour through Toulon, you put on a delightful little show with your pretend drowning act. Bravo! I wish I had been there to applaud you. Naturally, the audience gobbled it up, because it didn't know any better. But you know, Vidocq has been putting on similar shows since before you were even arrested for that first theft. He must have 'died' half a dozen times by now, each one under a different name and conviction. So you may have fooled the public, and you may have fooled the Crown Prosecutor, but you didn't fool good ol' Mec."

"How could he have known?"

"Well," said Javert with evident pleasure at his boss' detective prowess, "you see, he was down in Toulon on a bi-quarterly visit, and he'd been told about the untimely demise of one Jean Valjean, committed under number 9,430. Something about the story rang false to him, so he made some further inquiries with the ship's crew. Everyone kept telling him the same fantastic story, only no one seemed to realize how fantastic it was. The convict, they said, God rest his brave soul, in rushing to the sailor's aid broke his ankle chain with a single blow of the hammer! Not one of the idiots who watched you had the wherewithal to find this suspicious. Even after Vidocq pointed out to the officer who was on watch then that it is impossible to bust a sound ankle chain with a single blow, the man brushed it off! 'The prisoner must've been overcome with fellow-feeling,' he said. 'A noble sentiment can arm a man with Herculean strength.' Noble sentiment! thought Vidocq. Sure, and also a sharp little saw to nibble at the ankle-chain at night. And upon returning to Paris, he promptly filed the officially deceased Jean Valjean under 'at large' in our little rogues' catalog."

Javert took a moment to glance around them, then continued:

"My point is this: you really oughtn't count on the authorities to remain ignorant of your survival. The court of assizes isn't aware of it only because they have not yet been informed by the prosecutor. The prosecutor has not informed it yet, because you have not yet been _officially _found. And you have not yet been _officially_ found because, ever since our little episode at the barricade, I've felt compelled to stay Vidocq's hand. However, I cannot do this for much longer. He is demanding action from me, either one way or another. Now, I cannot simply let you wander free around Paris in violation of your ban, because I know you too well to trust you to remain out of trouble. But neither do I think that you belong in prison. So I propose to have you transferred directly into my charge. Think of it as a continuation of your parole, with me as your parole officer. And I can promise you that I will be able to furnish you with all the proper papers. Meaning that if you obey the law from now on, then no bobby and no soldier will have the right to treat you as anything but an honest citizen."

"You mean, you will obtain me a permission to reside legally in Paris?" asked Valjean, not understanding the vague offer. "Or are you talking about a pardon?" The last word almost made him stutter.

Javert looked at him for several long seconds.

"We will see," he said finally. His tone was that of a father tentatively promising a treat after dinner to his hopeful young offspring, provided the latter's best behavior and full obedience to the nanny.

Leaving Valjean to ponder all that was said, Javert turned back towards the bartender and asked for another grog. Under the fold of his jacket, the small pistol remained pointed directly at Valjean's gut.

Valjean's head was swimming. Obtaining a pardon would mean a petition to the Highest Name. But why would the King concede the plea of a recidivist robber - and now also a rebel to boot? Or was Javert suggesting that he would petition on Valjean's behalf? An old police agent whose sudden mental breakdown and suicide prompted all of a paragraph's notice in the Monitor, who was he to hope for the King's attention and acquiescence?

Suddenly, an image floated up in Valjean's memory of a social gathering he attended once in Montreil-sur-Mer, a buzzing ballroom full of splendid ladies and prosperous gentlemen – the get-together called in honor of his election to the Mayor's office. Javert had been there also, conservatively but handsomely attired in a black coat. Pinned to his left breast were two Legion of Honor crosses, the bright orange of the ribbons and the white-green enamel of the badges even more dazzling against plain black fabric. The "bamboches," as Javert had dismissively referred to his decorations, attracted envious glances from the men and coyly intrigued glances from the ladies throughout the evening.

'In truth, what do I know of this man?' thought Valjean as he watched Javert banter with the disheveled young bartender over his newly refilled glass. 'Nothing at all, it seems.'

The bartender dove back under his counter. "So what do you say?" immediately said Javert as though there had been no pause in their conversation. "Are you ready to quit your prison or are you not?"

For a few moments Valjean was quiet. Javert's speech, combined with his vague promise of legality and Valjean's own strange recollections, had had a crushing effect. He sat and listened to the merry noise around him. These are free men, he thought to himself. Honest workers, from the look of them. They have no criminal records. Their papers are not counterfeit. They have finished their day's hard labor at the shop or on the streets and are all having dinner together in a café, enjoying their food, their wine, their company. Their voices aren't hushed; their glances aren't furtive; they don't conceal themselves under wigs; they don't change their clothes every few hours. And me? I'm always worried. Constantly. Without respite.

_Gy ou nibergue_?

My God, how I want to stop being worried!

Valjean raised his eyes to meet Javert's.

"I think I'm ready."

Javert nodded his head slightly. "Wonderful. I knew you'd see it my way," he said with approval.

With his left hand, he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from one of his numerous pockets, stuck it in his mouth and raised the small pistol to it. Before Valjean could do anything but gasp, Javert had pulled the trigger. The mechanism gave a loud click and a small bluish flame licked the cigarette, setting it aglow.

* * *

1) – "Chucking the tools" – giving up thieving.

2) – "Recovered horse" – cheval retournee, a re-captured escaped criminal. Valjean is right to wonder – in prison, agents of authorities were usually slaughtered upon being discovered, and "recovered horses" enjoyed a rather high status in the prisoner hierarchy.

3) – "Forty-five by fifteen," or just plain "forty-five" (quarante-cinq, quarante-cinq à quinze) - basically, something said when one sees a lot of crockery and glass broken. Meaning, probably, "quarante-cinq pièces à quinze sous" - what it'll cost to have everything replaced and repaired.


	5. Ch 5

At the corner of Rue Mouffetard and Rue Gracieuse, under the boarded up windows of an out-of-business workers' cafe, a heavily built man of middle age clothed in a short jacket and rolled-up trousers stood leaning against a brick wall.

The shadow cast by the awning, which had not yet been removed by the owner, hid him from the chance glances of rare evening strollers. He had spent one hour huddled motionless behind a heap of refuse; he was now passing his second hour standing equally still under the awning. He watched the streets with the focus of a dog watching the short stretch of road from house to hedgerow. The stretch under his observation was bounded by the rabbit-skin dealers' booth and the new printing office on Rue Gracieuse, and by the natural curve in the road on Rue Mouffetard.

But evidently, even this remarkable patience had its limits. If anyone had observed this silent sentinel between half past eight and quarter to nine, they would have seen him repeatedly running his hand through his curly blonde hair and biting the inside of his cheek, which signified the height of vexation.

The streets were quiet. No tilbury had passed for an hour, and the only pedestrians were the occasional drunk workers stumbling down Rue Gracieuse, cursing as they skidded in the dust. Every so often, a stray cat would slink down from a rooftop and dive noiselessly into the side alley, drawn by the squeak of rats rustling in the garbage. At some point two mangy toms came to armed conflict over hunting privileges within a certain territory but were quickly forced to declare armistice by a pail of water thrown from a third story window – and the invisible man underneath was treated to some truly foul splashes and a litany of equally foul blasphemies from a toothless mouth before the window was once again shut up and bolted. Nothing at all of interest had taken place since.

When at last the understanding crystallized that the evening was a bust, and that nothing seemed to be going down, the man allowed his next breath turn into a huge, sleepy yawn. He then gave the wall behind him a frustrated kick with his heel, straightened up, and surveyed the dark terrain with new eyes. Several windows were lit up; one of them allowed the sight of a seated girl sewing. The rest of the block, with the exception of cats and rats, seemed deserted of life.

In the distance, the bells of Saint-Medard struck nine.

"Sod this for a game of soldiers," mumbled Eugene-Francois Vidocq. He pulled the bill of his cap tighter over his forehead and set off down Rue Mouffetard towards the corner of Rue Pierre- Lombard, where a coachman had fallen into a doze waiting for him.


	6. Ch 6

Valjean's pious soul was dancing and leaping in joy. It smelled a miracle. A minute ago Javert was an enemy with a gun; now he was a colleague with a silly mechanical trinket. Such transformations, mused Valjean, do not tend to occur without the direct intervention of the Almighty, may His name be glorified forever and ever, amen and halleluja!

"What? What are you shaking your head at me for?"

"I can't believe I let myself be bought with a toy," grumbled Valjean, carefully masking his inner ecstatic turmoil.

"I'm surprised it actually worked, to be honest," said Javert, examining the pistol from an outstretched wrist. "Whenever I do this, two times out of three I end up looking like an unlucky suicide."

The mechanist in Valjean momentarily overcame the theologian. "How does it work?"

Javert's eyebrows made a leap and disappeared under the bangs that fell thickly over his low forehead.

"Ay, ask me something simpler. Like where plague comes from. Or why I look so much like my grandmother."

He spun the pistol on his forefinger, watching the flecked coating of cheap black paint gleam in the light of the lanterns.

"Here, have it," said Javert suddenly and tossed the toy into Valjean's lap. "Anatomize it in your spare time. Maybe you'll manage to fix it."

Valjean sniffed the gun barrel.

"Is it filled with combustible fluid?"

Javert gave the older man several large-eyed blinks through the blue haze of cigarillo smoke.

"Do I know? It was a present. Don't know how it works. Don't know why it doesn't."

Valjean twirled the pistol in his hands, then dropped it into his right coat pocket. Picking the toy apart would require some tools he didn't have on him at the moment.

Out of nowhere, the knowledge came that someone was talking behind them: two hushed voices speaking in ever-rising stage whisper. The men spoke in argot of the barriers. One of the voices was noticeably slurred with drink.

"... dead."

"Shut up! ... the whole faithful world ...?"

"And let it hear! ... hurt anyone?"

"... find him."

"... will find him? Mec... ...off like a whipped cur."

"There's always the..."

"... son of... bloody..."

"Shut up! He'll hear you!"

"What does that... know? ... La Force... chain-gang send-offs; Toulon... guard; Brest - only on inquiries. He's never been inside! Bet you a tooth he's never even done a job! I don't trust him worth a rusty farthing."

"Better him than some arse-licker from the municipality. At least he's lived among us."

"A flic is a flic. He's only spry in one thing: chasing our brother up and down the streets."

Javert turned around towards the chatterers. Valjean followed his suit. One of the men sat slumped in his seat; his face was beaded with unhealthy sweat and green from drink. The more alert of the two was trying to avert his eyes.

"He also kens the barrier music not at all poorly," says Javert sternly. "So if you two want to discuss the holes in his system, you might want to do it elsewhere then under his ear!"

"Our apologies, monsieur," said the one who was sitting upright.

"Sodding black-arsed bastard!" suddenly blurted out the drunk. "Devil's spawn!"

Javert looked at him with interest. The drunk's companion blanched and tucked his head reflexively into his shoulders like a tortoise.

"Any more commentaries?" asked Javert.

"I'm up to my balls in commentaries, you sod!" continued the drunk, oblivious to his companion's horror. "They killed him and you're here drinking gin!"

"Firstly, it's grog I'm drinking," said Javert, looking into his empty glass with longing. "And secondly: who killed whom?"

But the drunk man was already off the tracks and in his own maudlin world.

"Such a nice kid," he sobbed into his glass. "Such a sweet boy! Played guitar, made faces, laughed like a little tyke. And then - phewuit! Gone. I haven't seen him for months. No one's seen him. What did you do to him, you bastard? I know it were you! Sent him into some wolves' den, where you daren't tread yourself, didn't you? Played dead for a month while he was out there busting his hump doing all the dirty work? Brave enough to play dead is all you are, you bloody yellow cur!"

The cry resounded in Valjean's ears with such force that he looked around in alarm, saw a multitude of still, serious faces, and understood that the cafe had fallen dead silent.


	7. Ch 7

Javert combed the crowd with a searching gaze. Against the heavy background of silence, one could hear the soft clinking sounds from behind the counter, where the invisible bartender was re-shelving bottles and glasses, and rustling of cloth as some men shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

"Calmness, citizens, calmness," said Javert, getting up. "All is well."

"Tsk, man, what is this? Where I come from a man must answer for his rotten bazaar!" exclaimed a swarthy southern type from a nearby table (1). Several men "Yea'd" their assent.

"Bazaar from a drunk is no bazaar at all," cut off Javert decisively. "And basta. Incidentally," he raised his voice a little more, "since I appear to have all of your attention, the lottery has been drawn for the use of the dartboard. One second."

There were hoots and scattered applause. Javert leaned against the counter and extended his arm behind him. Valjean saw him snap his fingers twice to Michel, who immediately put a lined sheet in his hand. Valjean did not even have time to see where he got it.

Javert skimmed the sheet. "The first use of the back room goes to tables two, seven, and thirteen." There was a flurry of activity as men began to conspire within and between tables, nodding their heads to one another. "The time slots are fifteen minutes, with one minute tie-breaker allowed upon request," continued Javert after a slight pause. "Have fun."

"And you?" asked someone from the crowd. Valjean recognized the nervous tenor of his old table companion.

Javert shrugged jerkily and folded the sheet. "I'm playing in the first rotation, as always. If you are overcome with desire to lose a round to me personally, I might have some time later. Any other questions? No? Marvelous. You may go back to enjoying your meals."

"Incidentally," Javert turned to Valjean and then fell silent. Valjean waited patiently. "Incidentally," repeated Javert and scratched at the back of his head like a schoolboy picking at lice. "You are coming with me to the first rotation."

"Alright," agreed Valjean. "I'm not very good at darts, though."

"Trust me, darts will be the last thing we'll be playing at in there," murmured Javert distractedly. His slightly unfocused gaze seemed to be aimed at something to the immediate left of Valjean's shins. "I'm going to go take a leak," he said suddenly. "Wait here. If I come back and find you gone, consider your whole person forfeit, down to the marrow of your bones. Do you read me?"

"I read you," said Valjean, who was already starting to get used to Javert's peculiar speech.

"Good. See you in a few." And with those words, Javert turned abruptly on his heel and dissolved into the smoke-saturated air, as if falling through a crack in the floor tiles.

For a while Valjean simply sat and waited. Occasionally, a waitress would approach the bar to pick up a bottle of wine or brandy, which the bartender would hand to her without getting up - a disjoined arm with a bottle would periodically shoot up from behind the counter, like a drunk's deranged salute to the poison killing him.

When Javert did not hurry to reappear, Valjean fished a notebook out of his coat pocket and spent some time playing "words." It was one of his favorite little amusements and it involved constructing as many short words as possible out of one long one. In the last few years, he and Cosette, who was now almost as well-read, used to while away long winter evenings scribbling away at their respective sheets in competition for crumpets. He never won a single round and couldn't have been happier for it.

After a few minutes of intermittently staring thoughtfully into space and silently mouthing various syllables, Valjean had three more words added to his list for "dénouement." Javert was still absent. Valjean bit the end of the pencil, deliberating whether it would be cheating to write the feminine form of "dément" for more points, when a huge palm landed heavily onto his shoulder, clasping him firmly.

* * *

1) Bazaar - talk. Rotten bazaar - fighting words; malicious lie. In the criminal circles, an offense punishable with grievous bodily harm.

I'm taking liberties with this one: the word "bazaar" means all that not in French but in Russian criminal circles. However, even though it was really new to French language in 1832, the word "bazaar" had at that time at least three "street" meanings that I know of: furniture, sale, and a type of building. I took a leap of faith and derived this fourth meaning from another well-known attribute of a bazaar: the noise.


	8. Ch 8

The first thought that hit Valjean was this: It's over. It's all over. The second one was: But he had promised! And the third one was: Eh?

"I said, are you enjoying yourself? Here tonight?"

"Yes," said Valjean, recovering the modicum of presence of mind needed for social niceties. "Yes, I am actually. Very much so."

The man beside him was tall and appeared to be in his early fifties. Like Valjean, he was stoutly built, but with a head of blonde curls and large sky-blue eyes that looked at once mischievous and innocent. In his left hand, the man held a brown leather cap with a large curved bill; his right hand was grasping Valjean's shoulder with some considerable force.

"Am I under arrest? asked Valjean sheepishly.

"Have you done something for which you ought to be arrested?" asked the man, tilting his handsome head to the side like a cocker spaniel.

"N-no," lied Valjean.

"Then worry about nothing," reassured the stranger and perched on Javert's stool. "So! Are you who I think you are?"

Valjean introduced himself and inclined his head.

Something flashed in the man's blue eyes as they narrowed. "Hmm, so you are indeed he. Javert's told me all about you."

He offered Valjean his hand, which Valjean grasped cautiously. "Vidocq," said the man simply.

"It's an honor to make your acquaintance," said Valjean, somewhat surprised that he actually meant it.

"So you've come to help out with the operation, I take it?" said Vidocq, not bothering to respond to the compliment. "That's fine, that's fine... Well, no, it's actually not fine, but that's through no fault of yours."

"What's through no fault of his?" sounded a familiar baritone above their heads.

"Oh, nothing," said Vidocq without lifting his gaze. "Not everything can be his fault, you know?"

"Uh huh," grunted Javert noncommittally, extending a long bare arm from the shadows towards the rum bottle. Having taken possession of it, he leaned against the bar and began leisurely unscrewing the tall cap. "Go on."

"Where have you been?" Vidocq sounded vaguely displeased.

"Taking a piss. The Code allows for it," said Javert. "Well?"

Vidocq finally lifted his head. "Let's take this to the backroom," he suggested in a flat voice.

"No," declared Javert abruptly. "Or else we take him there with us. This concerns him too. Let him hear."

Vidocq shrugged. "Fine, whatever you want. Makes no difference. I'm nixing everything for tonight."

"Why?" Javert sounded more curious than angry.

Vidocq held a disconcertingly long pause.

Javert placed the cap onto the counter with exaggerated care and took a sip straight from the bottle. "What is going on, General? You were jumping about this last night. Something happened. Tell me."

"There was no word from him," Vidocq said quietly.

The words effected a peculiar change in Javert's countenance. The corners of his mouth crept downward; his eyes seemed to have retreated into their sockets; the fold around his mouth deepened; his lips thinned and lengthened. It was like watching a thundercloud steal over the sun. In the blink of an eye, Valjean saw Javert transform into his old, recognizable, gloomy self.

"I waited for three hours," continued Vidocq, as if anticipating a rebuke.

"What do you suspect?" Javert asked hoarsely.

"I don't know," admitted Vidocq without breaking eye contact with his colleague. "I only know that he's always managed to leave a note before. Not this time, though. It's starting to look like something is going wrong with him."

"Then it's all the more necessary that we take this to completion tonight. If they did figure him out but have not taken action yet, we may yet have time to save him. But we need to know for sure who sold him out and how." Javert looked down at his boots and gave them several shallow, barely perceptible nods, as if agreeing with their inaudible but sage advice.

"How do you intend to take this to completion without a tip-off?" Vidocq lowered his voice: "We've got three men in with Patron-Minette, and all of them think they're the only ones in the game. We can discount Moineau as a possibility, fine. Two men, then. Neither one is supposed to know about the other, and especially about Moineau. So either one of them found out and sold out one of his colleagues, or someone from the side had a hand in it. And Moineau can't or won't say who. So what now? What can we do? toss everyone in the Conciergerie and see who talks first?"

"I'll trap the rat myself. I have ways."

Javert carefully placed the empty rum bottle onto the counter. His fingers were trembling.

"I'll need a few minutes to make up a plan of action," he told Vidocq. "Five minutes."

There was something new in his voice, something cold and hard that made Valjean recall their stand-off over poor Fantine's deathbed.

"I'll leave you to it, then," answered Vidocq rising from his seat. Valjean, who had been listening to the conversation with growing unease, moved to follow suit, but Javert made a staying gesture.

"Don't leave," he asked quietly. And then added more quietly: "Please."

When they were alone in their corner, Javert bent low over the counter, leaned on his elbows and set his mouth onto his fists. It was obvious that something horrible had just transpired, and Valjean felt a surge of deep compassion for his ex-nemesis.

"What happened?" he asked softly.

Javert didn't answer. Instead he muttered: "And of course, there's no calling on the young Bernard - when do they ever leave the gardens before the gas is lit?.. They're never back so early. Oh, _dame_! but shall I run and ask anyway?"

Valjean understood little, but felt compelled to offer aid anyway:

"I can ..."

"Thou canst naught!" said Javert, as if chopping something in half. Then, quieter: "Beg your pardon."

"You can say 'thou' to me - I don't mind."

"I mind," said Javert. "And thank you - but there's no point running for a message that isn't come yet. I speak nonsense. Don't mind me. I'm not well."

He hid his face entirely in his hands, and his muffled voice called out to the bartender: "Michel! I'll take the other bottle now."

"Sorry, monsieur, I'm all out."

Slowly, Javert's face re-emerged from behind his hands. His eyes were red and swollen but dry. His left cheek was twitching. "What do you mean, 'all out'? You always have two bottles of rum this time of the week."

"Usually I do, but not today. That was the second bottle you just finished."

Javert glanced at Valjean with round, almost childishly frightened eyes; his long black lashes telegraphed utter confusion.

"Have I really drunk a bottle and a half of rum without noticing it?" he asked incredulously, speaking right through his fingers.

"No," answered Valjean. "Not with me present, anyway."

Javert looked at the bartender again. Michel was drying off a row of wine glasses with a small white rag. The glasses were short, stout and clear, except for one, which was taller, looked brand new and had a greenish tint to it.

For some time Javert watched the bartender work and then asked cautiously: "Michel, was someone else here today? Someone with a lust for rum?"

"There was, actually," answered Michel.

"A man?"

"A man."

"When was he here?"

"A few hours past. He took a late dinner. I had just finished up taking inventory, so it must've been around four."

"And he drank an entire bottle of rum?"

"Oh yes. The whole bottle and half of the second one too."

"Ah. This being why I didn't notice at first. Just a bit left." Javert drew a single, shuddering breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his pupils had constricted into tiny black dots.

"What did he look like?"

"I didn't get a good look. He didn't encourage attention paid to his person, if you get me. Wore a long brown redingote with a large-brimmed hat, that's all I can say. I couldn't see anything of his figure or face - he kept his hat pulled down low the whole time. It was this glass he drank from, actually," said Michel, demonstrating briefly the greenish glass he had been wiping. "Asked for it specifically, yeah. Said he liked the color."

"That's very interesting," almost whispered Javert, fixing an intent stare on the glass in Michel's hands. The bartender paused in his ministrations and stared back uncomprehendingly. "May I see it for a second?"

The bartender gave the glass one last rub and handed it over to Javert, who carefully inspected it against the light.

"Is it new?" he asked, running a fingertip along the rim.

"Sure is. Just purchased twenty new ones two weeks ago."

"Did you check them all for defects? Bubbles, scratches, bumps, that sort of thing?"

"Of course I did. I wouldn't buy a bad thing."

"To be sure. So there were no scratches on this glass when you bought it two weeks ago?"

"None."

"_Tiens! tiens! tiens! tiens!_" murmured Javert to himself excitedly, lifting the glass to squint through its murky walls at a lantern.

"Why, are there scratches now?" asked Michel with worry and reached to take the glass from Javert. "Oh, what? Not a fortnight in use and already damaged! What a swindle! Look at that!"

Michel thrust the glass under Valjean's nose, inviting him to share in his outrage. There were, indeed, three shallow vertical scratches on the outside of the rim. The middle one was shorter than the other two, and a trompe d'oeil gave the lines the appearance of a stylized "M". Valjean wondered if it would be out of place for him to offer to buy a replacement, then decided to just leave the hapless entrepreneur a nice tip before leaving.

"Don't be too hard on your supplier," said Javert with quiet triumph. "Those lines were definitely made with intent. The man who drank rum from it - was he alone?"

"No, he had another fellow with him."

"A big man? A small man?"

"A big man. Very big. Like him over here, only much taller," said Michel and gestured with the glass in Valjean's direction.

"Did they talk much?"

"No, they talked little. Well, the bigger guy said nothing at all, he just ate and drank. The smaller one, the one who drank up all your rum, he was reciting verses the whole time."

"Was he now!.."

Javert sounded fascinated. His knuckles were going now white, now pink again as he clenched and unclenched his fist.

"Michel," he said seriously. "I am now going to need you to concentrate for me, because this is of the utmost importance – do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Those verses that the man was reciting? Relay them to me, as closely as you humanly can."

Michel blinked. The question appeared to have caught him off guard.

"What were they about?" asked Javert.

"Uhm... something funny about a monk and a nun. Blasphemous though."

He frowned as he strained to recall. Javert watched him hungrily.

"Something like... 'Oh my sister,' tam di di, something something 'sparrow in a cage,' tam di di, 'why ever are you not'... no, no, that's not it... 'Why ever must you be my spouse in Christ...' Right, I have it! It went like this: 'Oh my darling Agnes, see how the sparrow thrashes in his cage! Why must it be that you and me are brother-sister in the world and spouses but in Christ?'"

And then Valjean heard a sound he had never heard before – a sound he had never thought imaginable: Javert gasped.

"Are you sure, child?" Javert's voice was so low it was almost inaudible against the din of the cafe. "Are you certain these were his exact words? He said 'sparrow in a cage'? he said 'Agnes'?"

"Certain! Catchy little rhyme, it was," said Michel and turned away to stack clean glasses in the cupboard.

The bartender's account had had a strange effect on the inspector. With his head lowered, his back bent and rigid, and his face hidden by loose strands of hair, Javert now looked like a man in the last stages of devastating, inconsolable grief. Valjean called out his name. Javert did not move or make a sound. Perplexed, Valjean leaned in close and received a nasty shock.

Javert's eyes were wide open and lifeless; his mouth drooped open and a clear bead of drool was collecting in its right corner.

This scared Valjean so much that he jumped off his stool, grabbed Javert's shoulders with both hands and shook him, whispering frantically:

"Javert! Are you alright? Answer me!"

Suddenly Javert blinked and his left hand flew automatically to his mouth. His eyes refocused and saw Valjean standing right in front of him. "How long was I out of it?" he asked matter-of-factly.

"Twenty, maybe thirty seconds," answered Valjean. "Are you okay? Do you want to lie down?"

"Yes," said Javert unhappily. "I do want to lie down. I always want to lie down. And there's never any time." He grimaced and wiped his hand on his trousers. "Don't be alarmed," he said. "This happens on occasion. They are just little spells, nothing to worry about."

Javert paused and looked with pointed interest at Valjean's hands, which were still resting on his shoulders. Valjean released him. Javert gave a weak, lifeless smile and said: "Thanks for the concern, anyway."

He stood up and fished around in his pockets.

"Here, Michel, catch," he said, tossing a louis on the counter. Michel dove under the counter to rattle with the coin box.

"Incidentally, which of them paid you for the meal? The bigger man or the smaller one?" asked Javert.

"The bigger one," said Michel.

"What coin did he pay you in?"

"Silver. Two pieces of five francs."

"Then ring all the _monarques*_ in your box."

Michel's eyes reappeared above the counter and asked why.

"I'm positively certain," said Javert, "that the behemoth had paid you in false coin. He's a naughty customer."

Accepting his change and turning half of it immediately back over to Michel, Javert turned back to Valjean.

"It looks as though the game still is on for tonight after all. However, its rules have just changed. Remember how I told you that you might be obligated to twist some arms tonight?"

Valjean nodded.

"In light of recent information, we're going to have to make a slight alteration of plans."

"Let me guess: I will be twisting something else besides arms?" attempted to joke Valjean.

Javert did not smile.

"Oh, you'll still be twisting arms, no worries there," he answered with ironclad assurance. "Only now it's my arms you'll be twisting."

* * *

* Un monarque - a five-franc coin.


	9. Ch 9

Author's Note: A token chapter to show that I'm not dead and neither is this story. It's coming along, I promise. I just need to work out a few logistical problems.

* * *

"Why would I need to twist your arms?"

"Because," Javert answered,"if you do not, I might commit a murder tonight. And I have far too much work projected ahead of me to waste time arguing with Gisquet over incidental corpses. You will be saving me days of valuable work-time."

The callousness of the reply gave Valjean goose bumps.

"How can you say things like that?" he reproached softly. "How can you equate a man's life to work-time?"

For a few seconds Javert stared at him with empty eyes and then said:

"It was a joke."

"One oughtn't joke like that."

Javert sucked a tooth and made a face.

"You know, Cric," he said conversationally but with a hint of irritation, "I hold joking to be one of the inalienable rights of man. Civilization gave man pain and then gave him a sense of humor to cope with it. Me, I believe I've experienced enough of the former to merit unlimited use of the latter."

"And this is where you must twirl your black velvet cape in a dramatic fashion and exit stage left in large purposeful strides," commented Vidocq sarcastically from behind Valjean's back.

Javert rolled his eyes.

"Oh yes, I forgot. You're the only one who's allowed any pathos in this organization. The rest of us are just a bunch of lackeys without any right to drama."

"Exactly," confirmed Vidocq happily. Javert rolled his eyes again and batted his eyelashes energetically over the whites of his eyeballs. Valjean gave an involuntary snort of laughter.

"There you go, now you're learning," murmured Javert so quietly that Valjean barely heard him. "So, are we all ready to play this piece?" he asked aloud.

"I am." Vidocq flicked a plump, elegant wrist in the direction of the tables. "They are. As for you, well, you tell me."

"I'm ready."

"Have you calculated the culprit, then?" said Vidocq, amused.

"I have indeed." Javert started towards the backroom door. The two men followed him. "It's Landot. As we could have well guessed."

"What?" exclaimed Vidocq. "Come, are you certain? Not Fauntleroy?"

"Yes."

"Impossible!"

"The truth, nevertheless."

"But why would he do such a thing? He always seemed so happy with the job!"

Javert spread his hands.

"It seems his sister had something to do with it. Think back to the bint that's been cozying up to Montparnasse for the past few weeks - that's his sister. Landot's, I mean, not Montparnasse's. I don't think the devil's dandy has quite sunk to that level of depravity yet. Agnes Landot, yes. So the odds are good it was the liaison that shifted his loyalties, especially since the happy couple is apparently contemplating matrimony."

"And you know all this how?" asked Vidocq sourly.

"A little bird told me," said Javert, winked at Valjean and threw open the door, inviting both men in with an expansive, half-mocking bow.


	10. Ch 10

Vidocq rolled his eyes to Heaven, as if calling upon it to witness the atrocities going on below, and pushed past his agent into the backroom, murmuring to him as he passed:

"Take care with this one."

"Naturally," replied Javert in the same hushed tone. His mouth was stretched out in a grin that looked very little like an expression of good humor and a lot like lock-jaw.

Valjean heard everything but understood nothing. Instead of following Vidocq into the unlit room without windows, he paused by Javert's side to look the man in the face. Something about it looked wrong.

"What's the matter?" asked Javert.

Valjean recalled the strange fit he had witnessed by the bar and decided to risk a question.

"Are you feeling all right? You look terrible."

"Since when is that news?" said Javert through his teeth, which gave his words a few more hissing consonants than strictly necessary.

"I mean, you look ill," mumbled Valjean, squinting in the dim light. "And your eyes have gone all uneven!" he exclaimed, realizing what was bothering him.

The grin faltered.

"Uneven?"

"One is gray and the other is black," explained Valjean.

The grin melted.

"Well, then I'll just have to make this as quick as possible. Thank you for the warning." The murmur sounded almost sad but the eye that remained gray continued to examine Valjean with the same detached interest as before.

"But why is your pupil expanded like that?"

"Are you in decent form?" suddenly asked Javert. "I know you can carry a man on your shoulders a fair distance. Would you be able to drag a somewhat heavier man up four and a half flights of stairs?"

"I would," answered Valjean, chills of apprehension running up his spine.

"Good."

Javert made a move to enter the room but Valjean gripped his sleeve.

"No. Stay and explain yourself," he commanded. He had not addressed Javert in this manner since he'd been Mayor and Javert his subordinate, but his patience was at an end. Enough mysteries, thought Valjean. Enough frightful surprises.

Javert peered at him with eerily mismatched eyes.

"All right," he said calmly. "I weigh, by relatively recent calibrations, one hundred and sixty pounds. I reside on the fourth floor of my tenement. And by the end of the evening, I will probably be unconscious."

Javert turned on his heel and walked inside to join Vidocq, who had been cursing up a storm as he tinkered noisily with a busted lamp.


	11. Ch 11

Author's Note: Obligatory plot filler chapter. The action will pick up soon, I promise.

* * *

The sight that greeted the men entering the dark backroom must have been an unnerving one. In the middle of the table, facing the door straight on and illuminated by a single sputtering lamp, sat Vidocq himself, his arms crossed on his chest. To his immediate right sat a white-haired stranger with the torso of a gorilla and the creased brown mug of a recidivist. And in the darkest corner, under the dartboard, sat the recently deceased Inspector of the First Class Javert, now shaved clean of his trademark mutton chops. The mortal remains of the fearsome inspector were sucking morosely on a cigarette and periodically exhaling small puffs of acrid blue-black smoke.

His stretched out feet formed a sort of blockade before the kitchen door.

"Welcome, welcome," rumbled Vidocq at the men entering the room and doffing their caps. "Come in. Take places wherever you find them."

Soon, all the seats on the benches around the main table were taken. Latecomers lined up against the walls, taking care not to step farther than absolutely necessary into the corner guarded by a visibly foul-humored Javert.

"Is everyone here?" asked Vidocq.

"Handles went outside," answered a short blond fellow with a thin face pitted heavily with smallpox scars. But as he said it, the door opened and admitted Valjean's old table-mate who waved guiltily at Vidocq and immediately hid behind someone's back to avoid Javert's steely glare.

"Well, Landot is here, but I'm not seeing our Flower-Girl," said Vidocq quietly, leaning back his chair and addressing Javert rather than the group at large. "Pharaoh, you are in error."

"On with the program," said Javert from his corner. "If I'm in error, I'll answer for it."

Vidocq shrugged, righted his chair and surveyed the crowded room.

"Well, gentlemen, seeing as we only have a quarter of an hour, I'm going to skip all preliminaries and get right to the point. There are two main paragraphs on our agenda today: a bit of news, and a bit of new instruction. I'll begin with the news."

He paused and surveyed the room. The men were still and silent; all regarded him with intent, obedient eyes.

"It's well known to you, I'm sure, that the official winds have been growing cool towards us and ours - although I confess, I was naïve enough to expect our performance at the riots to have stalled the machinery at least for a short while longer. But from the looks of things, this isn't in the cards. I know they've already picked my replacement up in Palais de Justice. It'll be a matter of weeks before I'm turned out."

The room erupted in growls, curses and hisses. Vidocq turned his head towards Javert and signed a silent inquiry with his hands and eyebrows. Javert nodded, raised two fingers to his lips and gave two shrill whistles worthy of a highwayman.

The room fell immediately silent. The men fell back onto their seats; all eyes shifted to Javert's dark corner.

"Peace," said Javert even though there was already perfect silence. "It might not yet be the end of the world. A commissaire is being demoted specifically for the purpose of adopting all of you scoundrels. I've worked with him quite a bit over the years. He's not a bad sort. Granted, he has no more than a pigeon's nose worth of understanding about how the Sûreté functions, but that's where you fellows come in. Or not, as the case may be," he added, almost to himself.

"And! there is, in fact, a silver lining to our cloud," resumed Vidocq. "Gisquet has been giving me polite hints for some time now to take a break from active duty until the hubbub dies down – paid out of the municipal funds, no less. Hold your questions until I'm done, Handles."

This was directed at Valjean's old table-mate, whose right hand had been drifting slowly upwards from behind another fellow's back, as though pulled by invisible string. The hand retreated from sight.

"Knowing as I already do which way this coin will fall," went on Vidocq, "I acted against his expectations and took him up on the offer. So, until the moment when I will be asked to formally relinquish the reins of the organization to another driver, I will be on paid leave... _tonnere! _would you give it a rest, Handles?"

The string, it seemed, would not be denied: the relentless hand had resumed its journey upward. The short blond fellow gave Valjean's tablemate a shove in the ribs. The hand retreated once more.

"As I was saying, I will be on leave, and you all will have the honor and privilege of being shepherded personally by Pharaoh. Isn't that swell? Floor's yours, Pharaoh. Here - "

With those words, Vidocq rose from his seat in front of the lamp, waved Javert over to take his place, then made a few peculiar passes in the air with his hands, as though draping an invisible scarf around his lieutenant's neck.

Javert suffered the pantomime without protest. "Swell indeed," he said, when Vidocq retreated. His eyes traveled from agent to agent. "Mind you, it's for a month or two at most."

Now at the head of the table, Javert leaned forward over it, palms gripping the edge - a pose that made him look vaguely like a perching vulture eying a stumbling goat kid.

"But oh, what a month it promises to be!" he said with quiet irony. "Yes, children, yes. Papa bear is out; Mama bear is in. And her first order of business will be _tearing off your head, Handles! _Sodding hell! Whatever is gnawing at your insides, puke it up already!"

"You said 'or not, as the case may be,'" said a familiar voice feebly from behind some backs.

"What?" (Javert, leaning even farther forward, as if straining to hear.)

"What?" (Vidocq, also leaning forward, as if ready to spring on the wretch derailing the proceedings.)

"You said the new commissaire doesn't get how the Sûreté functions, but that's where we fellows come in - or not, as the case may be," elaborated Valjean's table-mate's voice in a rapid-fire recitation. "Why not?"

Javert straightened out a bit again. "Is this is a vaudeville?" he said almost wistfully. "A kingdom for a rotten orange."

"What?" (Valjean's table-mate, still hiding behind taller men.)

"What?" (Vidocq, now leaning back in his chair and frowning.)

"An orange! to throw at this clown!" growled Javert. "_Dame!.. _Well, no matter. I was getting to this anyway. So!" he clapped his hands and kept them clasped together as he surveyed the room once more. "As Handles could not keep from pointing out, you fellows might be of use in adjusting Allard to his new job - and then again, you might not. Why not? Because there is talk at the Prefecture of sacking you all."

A panicked murmur drifted over the table. Javert nodded along with it, as if agreeing with the sentiment.

"Yes, yes," he repeated, crossing his arms on his chest and turning to Vidocq. "There's also talk to taking our little coat of arms, can you believe it? It'll be the damn rooster now. Fearsome hunters, those roosters..."

"The Gallic rooster is a fine symbol," retorted Vidocq, as though trying to convince himself. "You just have no patriotism in your soul, you damned foreigner."

Javert turned back towards the men.

"Now, I realize many of you will choose to be outraged at me personally for this. Not the wolf thing, the other thing. You might think, 'Wasn't it Javert's job to intercede with the Prefecture on our behalf? Wasn't he supposed to be our Mediatrix, as it were? wasn't he hired to vouch for us?'"

Javert began to stroll leisurely around the table. "'And now he's stabbed us in the back, that blackguard Javert - "

At this Javert stopped directly behind the chair of one of the seated men. The man paled and opened his lips, as though in disbelief, but Javert had already moved on to stand behind his neighbor.

"'That pederast - '"

The neighbor inclined his head low to the table, as though ducking a blow. But Javert moved onward, continuing to circle the table.

"'That darkie... that whoreson... that son of a bitch... shit-for-brains... devil's spawn... hell's own grandmother - my personal favorite... boy-chaser - utterly untrue, I'll have you know... praying mantis - almost poetic, that one..."

His circumnavigation of the table complete, Javert took his place once more at the table and leaned once more on his palms, rocking back and forth slightly. Valjean could not help but notice that all the faces that looked gloomy and worried at the beginning of his journey now looked either half-dead from terror or, in the case of those Javert passed over, perversely enraptured.

"'Who does he think he is, coming in here and sacking us all right away?'" Javert nodded a few more times. "I understand. Believe me. I know what it's like to do your job to the best of your ability, obey your duty, and then receive an uncalled-for reprimand from your superiors."

Javert shot Valjean a side glance and cocked an eyebrow his way.

"Here is the long and short of it: authorities have no trust in you. Whether this is deserved or undeserved - let us not speak of that right now. I'm not about to launch any investigations. But here is my honest warning, to those who can set aside their grudges and hear it. When Allard comes in, - perhaps in a month, perhaps in two months - take some initiative and present yourselves at his office. Be nice, be polite. Be clean. Smell good. Dress in your best clothes - by which I mean, your most respectable clothes, not ones shot through the the most gold thread and hung with the most gaudy bangles. Leave your earrings at home - most of you look ridiculous with them in, anyway. Do not spit on the floor. Ask for a minute of Monsieur Allard's time, and don't leave the waiting room until you get it. When he sees you, bow deeply, and make a case for the police retaining you on their lists. Be honest about your contributions: neither boastful nor shy. Something tells me that if you do not push for being kept, you will be turned out. I hear Allard is eager to re-start the Sûreté with a clean slate. To him, that means getting rid not only of confirmed malefactors, but also of suspected ones. And you, my nice fellows, are all suspect by default."

He sighed.

"Of course, I realize that some of you will see it as licking the Prefecture's arse. Working for Vidocq allowed you to spy on your one-time comrades and accomplices not out of a late-blooming love of the law but out of spite and vengeance. This allowed you to retain a measure of self-respect: you were not police agents, just wronged _fanandels_ avenging yourselves and getting paid by the city to do so. Well, no more of this. From now on, you will need acknowledge a very simple thing: whatever you may have been in the past, henceforth, you are men of the police."

He leaned forward on his hands again, extending his neck once more over the table.

"And if that thought does not sit well with you - if being a police spy is not your cup of tea - if being perpetually squeezed by the society of lawful persons on one side, by the society of thieves on the other, living your life despised by both, - if that sounds like too raw a deal, too high a price... Then leave tonight and do not come back. That way, we'll know where you stand. Of course, next time we meet, I might not be so sweet and pleasant. But I'll be even worse if I find out that you've been playing the city false."

"Why do they want us gone now?" asked someone.

Javert shrugged and sat back down. "Who knows. The magistrates of Paris are a whirling, ever-changing lot. Perhaps the time has simply come."

He drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table.

"Those of you who read foreign papers, - I know a few of you do - remember how a few years ago there was some hoopla about an English physician who was treating women in child-bed by sticking a little hose into veins on their husband's arms and letting some of their blood flow into their wives? Got fabulously rich off it, apparently. Well, a fellow tried doing this in France once upon a time as well. Not recently, but almost a hundred and fifty years ago. Only he used animals. His first effort involved putting some lamb's blood into a feverish boy. The boy lived. So far so good. Then a laborer came to him, also ill. Sheep's blood for him. The fellow went back to work the next day, rejuvenated.

And then a young nobleman was brought to him, at death's door. So the good doctor prescribed a good dose of calf's blood, and delivered that into his veins. The man seemed to get better - he awakened, he began speaking - hope was restored to his family.

'Well!' thought the doctor. 'If I can do this much with the blood of one calf, perhaps the blood of two shall cure him altogether!'

But when more blood was poured into the patient, he began to grow feeble again, and before the procedure was finished, he died right there on the table."

The men looked puzzled. Valjean realized he probably did as well.

"The point is this," said Javert didactically. "Twenty years ago, the police of Paris was very sick. Practically at death's door. Contagion was overcoming it. The city could not handle all the new people pouring into it, and all the malefactors that came with the people. Thieves ran wild. Who knows how far it might have gone, had Vidocq not introduced himself into the feeble arm-vein of the police and poured in some new blood. The police was rejuvenated - it became more alert, it was able to handle the illness of the city a bit better - enough to give the citizens hope. But in later years, as the new blood kept pouring in, the citizen body began to reject it. What used to be a mechanism of rejuvenation became yet another illness. So if my suspicions come to pass, and the Prefecture does turn you out, don't take it as a slight against you personally. At the end of the day, we all serve at the pleasure of the magistrates. And they want new blood. That's life."

"Easy for you to say," said one of the men brusquely. "You won't be turned out for having a record."

"Oh, don't worry on that account." Javert snorted. "If they want me out as well, something useful will turn up."

A heavy silence hung over the room. Not since Toulon had Valjean seen that many gloomy faces.

"Well!" said Javert, raising his eyebrows yet again and grimacing. "Now that I've sufficiently upset everyone, you're all dismissed for the evening. Except you, m'sieur Landot. Stay a bit – we'll chat."


	12. Ch 12

Author's Note: Another token chapter to show that I'm not dead and neither is the story. More will be forthcoming as soon as I catch up with schoolwork.

* * *

"… all dismissed for the evening. Except you, m'sieur Landot. Stay a bit – we'll chat."

It could have been the poor light that made Valjean imagine the slight twitch of Landot's shoulders - or maybe the unfortunate agent, who was now barred from the hallway door by the exiting crowd and from the kitchen door by Javert's chair, also detected sinister notes in Javert's irreverent "blaguerons." Either way, by the time he turned around there was nothing to be read on his face but docility and servility.

"Let's go breathe some fresh air," Javert offered with a pleasant smile, rising from his chair and pushing open with the tip of his boot the door leading into the kitchen. Landot made an unsure step forward, then paused again, as if debating whether to follow Javert into the dark kitchen or "tear claws," and suddenly found at his right elbow the massive white-haired stranger.

Valjean put his palm on the man's back and gingerly half-led half-pushed him out of the room. The two made their way through the stacks of pots and dishes towards the slightly ajar door into the back alley, where Javert's cigarette glowed like a red firefly in the cool evening air. They seemed to be alone on the street, but Valjean could discern another such firefly about a hundred paces away, under the busted gaslight at the street corner.

"Any news?" asked Javert when the door behind them was shut.

Landot stood in a kind of stupor with his eyes fixed to the ground.

"You are not dead," he said in a quiet and, as it sounded to Valjean, dejected non-sequitur.

"Indeed, I am not," courteously affirmed Javert.

"But we all heard you drowned in the river a month ago! And Vidocq said laundresses found your body, that it was in the papers, that you left a will and named him executor. He even…"

Landot paused to catch a breath. His narrow chest rose and fell quicker and quicker. "Where have you been this whole time?!"

"We can discuss the details of my death later. For now, let's discuss the details of your life. Have you got any news?"

Paradoxically, the query seemed to make Landot's panic subside. He half-leaned against the wall and stuck his hands into his trouser pockets.

"Not really. They've been laying really low since the armed clash. They're scared – they see agents on every street corner. Babet talks of dropping out altogether and 'undertaking Lyon.' Guelemer has holed up in his lair in Arche-Marion and talks to others only through notes. We think he might have taken ill. Montparnasse…"

"I see you don't want to speak," said Javert suddenly, as if he heard nothing. "That is not good of you. Believe me, Landot, that only does you harm in the long run." He took a last shot drag on the cigarette, coughed once and rubbed out the butt on a wet paving stone with his boot. "One more chance to start telling me the truth."

"That's it. Sorry if it's slim," said Landot hoarsely. His throat convulsed in a nervous swallow.

Javert nodded and suddenly moved in closer, forcing the man to press back full on against the wall.

"Listen here, my patience isn't infinite," said Javert. "Under normal circumstances, we would be talking this over at a leisurely pace, tucked away somewhere at a station or at the office, behind shut doors. But you know what they say, if wishes were horses. Two weeks ago, a venerable industrialist's widow is slaughtered in her own home along with her _fille de confiance_ and the house is robbed of three hundred thousand francs in gold and jewelry. Vidocq receives not a word of warning from you. This vexes him, as you might imagine. And now today we learn from reliable sources that Patron-Minette had discovered that their gang has been penetrated by an agent of authorities. So birth me an explanation and be quick about it."

Javert held a moment of tense silence and then added in a tired voice:

"Look here, I'm not going to eat you if it's true. It happens to the best of us – it had certainly happened to Vidocq plenty of times. But you have to tell me. You must."

The look of sheer bewilderment on Landot's face was almost comical.

"Is this true, Landot? Were you found out?"

Javert's voice was now all-but brimming over with compassion. Valjean found it utterly unconvincing, but Landot was apparently an amateur in the art of deciphering Javert's moods. He blinked widely, then shuddered and grabbed himself by the hair, tearing at the thin greasy strands.

"It's true, I have been found out!" he groaned and sagged into Javert's arms, which opened instantly in a welcoming comradely embrace. "Oh, my God, my God!" moaned on Landot, "I am lost! I cannot go home – they'll slaughter me in my bed! And what of my sister, my poor Agnes? Who will protect her from those fiends? Oh, my God! All I have now is the hope that you will save us both!"

Through the entire monologue, which had been liberally salted with tears, Javert clicked his tongue soothingly and patted the distraught agent on the back. "Courage, my brave friend, courage," he murmured solemnly. "Come, let us walk. I have a fiacre waiting. We shall talk on the way."

At the mention of a fiacre, something like alarm quickly passed over Landot's tear-streaked mug, but Javert was already embracing him with the broad sweep of his right arm, and Landot had no choice but to let himself be led away.

Behind his back, the fingers of Javert's left hand beckoned Valjean to follow.


	13. Ch 13

Author's Note: Valjean finally gets a word in edgewise. Sort of.

* * *

I followed them as quietly as I could.

From a distance, one could almost think that they were two dear friends heading off to a night of cards or billiards, heads close and arms affectionately intertwined. Upon taking a slightly closer look, however, one could notice that Javert's left hand was performing suspiciously unfriendly motions behind his back: either peeling something away, or ripping something off, or clawing something out. Evidently, he was not finding Landot's story very convincing.

"So, you are the infamous Jean Valjean," sounded a voice suddenly to my left, and Vidocq appeared right at my elbow, as if simply condensing on the spot from the heavy, moist summer air.

"I am Jean Valjean, yes." How strange it felt to finally be able to affirm my identity without fear!

"How did you know to come to the canteen?"

"Javert sent me a card with the address and the invitation." Of course, I did not think it was he that sent it, but I reckoned it had to be someone connected to him.

"And you followed his directions willingly?"

I shrugged.

"Why not? I gave him the address of my domicile willingly, after all. I had not expected to avoid arrest. I was ready for it. I just thought that he must have passed the information to someone else in the police before he did himself in."

Vidocq was quiet for a few moments and then asked:

"How long have you two known each other?"

"About twelve years," I said, deciding to discount the brief acquaintance we had made back in the galleys back in the early days of the Empire.

"Know each other pretty well, then?"

"Not really."

"Why not?"

"Things just didn't work out that way," I answered tersely.

"But he runs into you on a public thoroughfare, and you are ready to go back to the galleys, just like that?"

I shrugged again.

"What's there to live for in the outside world?"

"What's there to live for in the galleys?"

"Nothing. But at least that way someone could be made happy by my sentence. Some_ cogne_ who got to collect on it. Even if it wasn't going to be Javert."

I decided not to mention the absurd feelings of regret I had experienced upon learning that it wasn't going to be Javert after all. What a pity, I had thought then: he spent half of his life chasing me across France and now won't even have a reward of it.

"So you two are on moderately good terms then? No hard feelings? No _personal_ animosity?"

Vidocq's voice was beginning to sound positively oily.

"Not on my side," I said firmly, hoping to cut off whatever insinuation he was about to make.

"So it would not occur to you, say, to dispose of him in a single swift blow to the head and make a mad dash for it?"

I realized that I was starting to develop a very deep and sincere dislike for the man.

"Why bother?" I replied, irritated by his tone. "I'm old and tired. You know who I am and what I look like. There are others who also know. What would be the point of starting on another marathon?"

"'Others'? What do you mean by 'others'?" replied Vidocq quickly. "There is no one besides me and Javert that knows about you."

I almost swallowed my tongue.

"Javert told me that the arrest warrant on me was public. Was he lying, then?"

Vidocq gave an uncommitted grunt.

"Javert," he said evasively, "is a singularly tricky character. He can lie through his teeth while telling you nothing but Gospel truth. You know what they say: you can take the boy out of the Gypsy wagon…"

His voice trailed off.

We turned the corner. There was no longer anyone standing under the broken gas lamp; the other cigarette light had been long extinguished. Meanwhile, Javert and Landot had picked up the pace; Javert's arm, which had been extended earlier in comradely support, now dragged its prey mercilessly along the pavement, as if to an inexorably violent and ignoble end. Landot was making weak attempts at breaking free, and I was already debating whether or not to run up and grab his right hand, which seemed to be aiming to draw something from underneath his vest, when the damned spy opened his mouth once again:

"Tell me then, Valjean," he said, "have you seen Javert at all after your escape near the convent before you ran into him that night a month ago?"

"No, I have not," I said, mentally calculating the distance from myself to Landot. "And it was morning, not night."

"What do you mean, morning?" asked Vidocq. He sounded surprised. "He said he found you at dusk by a sewer exit with a half-dead boy on your shoulders - or isn't that so?"

"He did, but I also saw him that day at dawn, when I arrived at the barricade and found him tied to a post in the tap-room of that café."

Suddenly, Vidocq grabbed my arm hard, forcing me to stop.

"I see," he said quietly. "I think you'd better tell me the whole story now." His eyes burned with such a terrible fire that I forgot all about my intentions of running ahead. "What post? What tap-room?"

In a few words, I told him about my sojourn to the barricade and Javert's subsequent near-execution that noon.

"That son of a bitch," whispered Vidocq when I had finished. "That lying, scheming, suicidal son of a bitch…"

With that, he abruptly released my jacket and dissolved back into the night air as if by magic.


	14. Ch 14

Author's Note: Very short, because I like cliffhangers.

* * *

Left once again to my own devices, I closed my eyes and walked for a short stretch in total darkness, listening to the increasingly loud scuffle ahead. I had thought that I'd already surpassed my threshold of astonishment for one night, but now I wasn't so sure.

I didn't have the time to work all the implication of Vidocq's outburst: someone screamed, and I tore off towards the sound.

It took me a few seconds to locate where the screams, now muffled, were coming from. It turned out that while I was being questioned by Vidocq, Javert had decided to step up his own interrogation and dragged his prey into a very narrow side alley, which I would never have taken for an actual street and not just a wide spacing between hovels had there not been a crude sign with an arrow and a list of house numbers to be found there nailed to one of its corner buildings.

I found them both in a state of great agitation. Landot was pressed up flush against the wall, and Javert hovered over him like a starving vulture over a half-dead rabbit, his palm covering the agent's mouth and most of his face with it.

"Hey there," I called out, "everything all right with you two?"

"Oh, we're _super_," growled Javert without taking his eyes off the terrified man. "Come closer, Cric. We're just getting to the nail of the program."

I came closer and leaned against a fire ladder, feigning nonchalance.

"What are you going to do to him?"

"Hmmm. That _is_ a puzzle. What does one do to traitors who sell their own to the enemy for several dirty pieces of silver?" mused Javert out loud, tapping his smooth chin theatrically with a finger and frowning in mock consternation. After folding a fist against his mouth and making some thoughtful noises, he nodded a little, as if having come to a decision, leaned his free hand on the wall to the left of Landot's head - the wretch flinched - and fixed the man with a very deep and thoughtful look

"Now, understand, Landot, - no, no, don't shut your eyes now, look at me!" Javert's long forefinger lifted Landot's chin and held it in place."Understand that if it were just anyone you betrayed, you might have fared slightly better. But you betrayed someone very dear to me and thus forfeited your whole person to my tender mercies."

"Are you going to take him away for questioning?" I inquired casually, scraping a bit of dirt off my hand with a fingernail.

"I really ought to, oughtn't I?" he said and sighed loudly. "But no. I won't."

"No, I'll do something else entirely. I'm going to hang him!" concluded Javert with horrifying cheerfulness and started undoing the cravat around his neck.


	15. Ch 15

Author's Note: A nice long chapter to make up for the previous one.

Author's Note 2: If you're reading this thing - please, review! I don't usually plead for reviews, but this bloody story is hatching to be novel-length, and I'm pretty sure I've finally worked out all the kinks from the plot, but what's the point of expending so much effort on something which two people besides me will read?

* * *

The words spilled out before I had a chance to stop them.

"Are you _insane?_"

"There are certainly those who would say so," conceded Javert, his left hand clenched around Landot's throat, and his right hand working furiously to untie the knot of his cravat.

In the back of my head, an indistinct voice was shouting for attention, but Javert's sudden shift from irate police official to homicidal maniac threw me so far off kilter that I couldn't concentrate on what it was saying. I stepped up and grabbed his right wrist, squeezing just hard enough to give him pause.

"Stop it," I said. "Just stop it. Whatever this man has done, it is not up to you to decide whether he lives or dies!"

"Careful there, Cric," he said sarcastically. "Next thing you'll be telling me that it's not up to me whether he goes to jail or goes free."

"Well, it isn't!" I blurted out and almost bit my tongue off. "Wait, is that what this comedy is all about? Listen, you know I never blamed you for following me. You were doing your duty, and I've always respected that. All I'm asking now is that you do your duty with respect to him, too."

Javert skewed his eyes briefly heavenward, as if calculating something, then pulled his hand carefully out of my grasp - I couldn't bring myself to actually hurt him- and continued to undo his cravat. "I didn't know, actually. Thank you for informing me. I am pleased and flattered. As for him -" Javert motioned towards Landot with his chin - "his case merits exception."

"What exception can there be from duty?"

"Is this still the world I woke up in this morning?" Javert mused out loud, obviously annoyed. "Am I really having this conversation with you of all people?"

The knot finally yielded; Javert pulled off the cravat and handed it to me. "Hold this while I wake him."

Only then did I notice that Landot's head was slumped against his chest. The wretch must have fainted right after hearing Javert's plan to execute him.

"Come on, laddie-o, wakey wakey," murmured Javert, slapping the man's flabby cheeks. "No sleeping on the job. Am I going to have to bring out the smelling salts?"

The smelling salts turned out to be unnecessary. After several hearty slaps, Landot came back about with a start, assessed the situation with the quick eye of an old-timer, and immediately began struggling in earnest, kicking and striking away at his captor for all he was worth.

"Well, don't just stand there like a bloody idol! Feel free to intervene!" grunted Javert at me, his face red from the effort of containing his terrified victim. "Or did you forget your promise already?"

The indistinct shouting in the back of my mind suddenly articulated itself into coherence. In the blink of an eye, I understood exactly what he needed from me.

Cursing myself silently three ways from Sunday for being a fool, I stepped into the battle arena and pulled them apart, pushing Landot back towards the wall with one hand and keeping Javert away from him with another. Immediately, Landot twisted out of my grip, shied back as far as he could under the ladder and squatted there, trembling.

If I had any doubts as to whether Javert's plan would work, they were gone now.

It so happened that around the fourth year of my first imprisonment, I suddenly found myself with a lot of spare time on my hands after my first escape attempt had been foiled and I was thrown into a dungeon for a solid month with double fetters around my feet. Undistracted by labor, company, studies with the Ignorantin brothers or even sunlight, I killed time by musing on the nature of things, and since I'd already effectively forgotten what life was like outside of prison, these things tended to be of singularly everyday nature. I sorted guards and sergeants into moral categories; I made chronologies and nosologies of prison food; I deciphered seagull cries from memory.

I also classified galley-slaves.

There are, I decided, three kinds of _forçats_. The first kind is cat-like. When pursued, these men instinctively seek high ground. They take refuge in trees and attics; they scale cliffs and climb mountains; they are of a mind that safety lies somewhere at the top. The second kind is dog-like. Those men run straight ahead regardless of what vertical opportunities present themselves and would rather repeat the feat of Pheidippides manifold than go up an incline. Safety to them is measured strictly in the number of miles they can put between themselves and their hunters. I belonged to this category, or so I thought back then – I am no longer certain of it. The third kind is rat-like. This category had always made the least sense to me, but I had observed the instinct of men-rats at work often enough to be sure of the uniqueness of their species. These men, when presented with the options to go up, straight or down will invariably choose to descend and will almost always lose by it. A basement, a hole in the ground, a cave, and in cases of rare luck, a sewer – these are the most prized sanctuaries of a man-rat.

Evidently, Landot belonged to this third category. Upon being presented with momentary freedom, he immediately surged downward and stuffed himself into the lowest corner available to him, effectively locking himself in and depriving himself of any chance of escape.

"You keep away from me!" he squeaked. "I didn't do nothing!"

"I'd say you did nothing, you whoreson!" growled Javert, struggling theatrically against my relatively loose grip on his shirtsleeves. "Nothing except changing your colors under our trusting noses! Where's that damned cravat?"

"In my pocket," I said. "Forget about it, you aren't getting it back in this agitated state."

"Fine by me," grunted Javert and made another spectacularly inadequate effort to break free. One could seriously think that he was being held in place by steel clutches, even though my fingers were barely clenched around the fistful of material I was holding. "I'll hang him with his own twisty black guts!"

"Ah my God, my God!" moaned Landot, rocking back and forth in his little nook.

Apparently deciding that the man has been brought to what interrogators call "the condition," Javert slipped effortlessly from my grasp, pulled Landot out from under the ladder and up against the wall once again.

"What, what, what have you told them?" he roared, smashing Landot's back into the bricks with each explosive "what".

"Only that there was another agent in the gang besides me, nothing more, I swear!" sobbed Landot. "I... I don't know the guy, I don't know who it is! I just… I …Several weeks after you had me join them, Mec gave me a letter to deliver, didn't say to whom, just told me to drop it off at such-and-such place and come back to Rue Saint-Anne straight away. I was curious, so I opened the damn thing and read it! It was in his hand, and he was talking about his "other man" with Patron-Minette. He went on and on about what high hopes he had for him! I was just so angry, you know? It's like that's all he trusted me to do, you know, to deliver his letters, and for a serious job like reporting on Patron-Minette, for that I wasn't good enough! for that he had to have another guy go in and do the job for me! And I haven't even done anything bad yet! I was sending reports in regularly and even got the scoop on a small affair they were going to pull on some Jews. And then just a couple of weeks ago Montparnasse went and asked me point blank: are you with the _cognes_? 'Cause if you are, and you don't admit it right this minute, says he, I know where your pretty sister lives, and I'll send you her head in a bucket. And you know Montparnasse - he'd do it and wouldn't even blink twice! So what was I supposed to do?"

By now Landot had worked himself up from pathetic tears into something akin to righteous rage, doubtlessly fueled by the memories of being wrongfully suspected of incompetence.

"Tear jerking story, Landot," hissed Javert, "but you'll forgive me if I don't pull out my hanky just yet. What – happened – to – the – other – agent?"

"Nothing happened to the other agent!" cried Landot. "I don't know who he is! The letter didn't say nothing about that. I told Montparnasse just that – I didn't know."

"Any other intelligence else you might like to report? Like, for instance, who executed the affair with the widow and where that money ended up?"

"Why should I tell you anything? You won't believe me anyway!"

"Try me. You might find yourself surprised at how ridiculously gullible I am."

Landot made a motion for Javert to come close.

"Nobody knows who did the widow in," he whispered. "They are all following each other around and suspecting each other of having done it in secret. And one of them did do it, no doubt – no one outside the gang knew that they were hatching this affair. Most of them have alibis with family or _largues_, but they know those aren't worth a hollowed-out farthing. What _largue_ or mother wouldn't give her man an alibi? So they don't know. And now they know one of them is a police agent - well, two, but they don't hold me for an agent anymore, just a _fanandel - _but again, they don't know who it is. I wasn't lying when I told you they were in panic – I wasn't, honestly! You know what they've been doing for the past couple of days?"

Landot glanced around with a mysterious air.

"They've split up into pairs!" he finished triumphantly. "You know, to supervise each other, so that the agent couldn't report back to the _cognes_! Guelemer paired with Claquesous, Montparnasse with Babet, and they assigned the rest by lottery. I myself was supposed to stick with Flower-Girl, but he broke his leg yesterday, slipped in the gutter, you know, and I left him at Hotel Dieu last night. So if he's your man, that's where you'll find him."

A heavy carriage could be heard approaching at full speed.

"That's your ride," said Javert impassively. "Come, let's go."

"I'll take him," sounded Vidocq's voice suddenly. Javert relinquished his prey without objections.

"Once they get him to the Conciergerie, have him tossed into the solitary," he instructed. "Lead him in with a bag over his head and a cape draped over his body. No one is to see him arrive; no one must be able to identify him; no one is to come in contact with him until I give orders otherwise. Assign him a room under the name Pere Chose and pick the guard you trust most to wait on him. No exercise in the _preau _with the other prisoners. Total secrecy must be had."

"Don't teach your Grandma how to suck eggs," grumbled Vidocq taking the prisoner by the arm and leading him out.

Not a second after they disappeared from the alley, Javert collapsed.


	16. Ch 16

Author's Note: Written under the debilitating influence of profound nausea.

* * *

My reaction isn't what it used to be, but I still managed to get there in time: Javert folded into my arms instead of head-first into brick wall. The decorated former inspector of Montreuil-sur-Mer turned out to be heavier than he looked. Then again, I thought, draping his left arm over my shoulder, that wasn't much of an accomplishment, considering that he looked positively skeletal.

"I'm all right," he murmured into the back of my neck.

"Sure you are," I said, pondering how to lower him to the ground without making matters worse.

"No, no, I am," he went on stubbornly. "I'm fine. Just… woozy."

His legs did look steadier now. I leaned him against the ladder and looked him in the face. I couldn't discern his color in the darkness, but his eyes were still unevenly dilated. I pressed two fingers to his neck. His skin was clammy, and his pulse was racing.

"You are not all right," I said. "You should go home and lie down."

He shook his head, cringing – whether from pain or from my suggestion, I couldn't tell.

"I don't need to go. I just got a little dizzy. I'm fine now."

"Grown men don't just fall over if they get 'a little dizzy,'" I said in my sternest 'Monsieur le Maire' voice. "Don't talk nonsense."

He sagged back against the wall.

"Well," he said, sliding down to the ground and assuming a sitting position with a wince, "this grown man does. More often than he'd like."

I crouched down next to him in the same position.

"Valjean?" he asked, "did you hear everything when Landot and I were talking?"

"Yes. Should I not have?"

"No, that's not what I mean. Did you hear what he went on to say after he said 'Do you know what they've been doing for the past couple of days?'"

"The whole thing about them splitting up into pairs, you mean?"

"Splitting up into pairs…" Javert repeated. "And then what?"

I shrugged.

"I don't know. I guess they are doing it out of precaution, like he said. To prevent the other agent from reporting back to you."

"No, no, that's not it. Listen…" He licked his lips and took a deep breath. "Repeat everything to me, will you? Everything after he started whispering."

"What for?"

Javert lowered his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Look… remember when we had that scene over the dead girl's bed? You kept trying to tell me something, but you didn't want her to hear, so you kept lowering your voice and I wouldn't let you, and you still kept at it, and finally I lost my temper and yelled at both of you?"

"Yes." I remembered perfectly. It took me a long time to forgive him for that horrible day.

"Well," he chuckled nervously, "it didn't improve any from that time."

"What didn't improve?"

"My hearing," he explained. "Look, this thing," he indicated his head, "it's an old war wound - I had two bombs burst next to me in Russia during a battle, within the space of an hour. The second one took off a chunk of skull and also busted something in my left ear. I never could hear with it properly after that."

I didn't say anything. I felt too ashamed to open my mouth.

"I heard everything fine as long as he kept his voice up. But then he started whispering right into my bad ear, and I lost about half of what he said to me. The sibilant half. What did he say? You don't have to shout at me, you know," he hurried to amend, "just don't mumble."

I told him. When I was done, he nodded, thanked me and lowered his face into his folded arms.

As if on cue, footsteps sounded behind us, and the alley was illuminated by a lantern.

"Almost forgot," breathed out Vidocq, fumbling for something in his trouser pocket. "Hang on, what happened here? Did you have a spell?"

"No, just got a bit dizzy," said Javert without lifting his face from his arms.

"Rrright," snorted Vidocq. "Dizzy. We've heard that one before." He leaned in towards me. "Make sure he gets home," he ordered quietly. "And make sure he stays home and doesn't go traipsing off."

I nodded.

"Where is that maggot?" asked Javert, raising his eyes and looking around.

"Oh, he got a bit testy, so they had to tie him up. And incidentally, how did you manage to summon four inspectors with a 'salad-basket' so quickly?"

"Not all that quickly," shrugged Javert. "Forty minutes is plenty of time."

"I see. 'Taking a piss,' were you?"

Javert grinned. "That too."

"Clever."

Javert leaned back. "You're the clever one here, 'Gene – I'm just out for a stroll," he said enigmatically.

"Rrright," repeated Vidocq and pulled some papers out of his pocket. "Here, I promised you the list of what got stolen from widow Saint-Leon."

"Ah, thank you," said Javert, taking them. "And what's this?" he asked, pulling a smaller, crisper sheet from between the two larger ones. "Is this..?"

"It is," said Vidocq solemnly.

"Well, I'll be... _Nom d'un chien!_" ejaculated Javert. "Look," he said and thrust the paper under my nose. He withdrew it too quickly for me to make out any writing but I did discern with some apprehension that the oval stamp in the lower right hand corner read "Depot de la Morgue."

"And you owe me a louis," said Vidocq.

"Twenty francs, what?... Ah, of course, of course, of course," Javert mumbled, patting down his pockets.

"It's only fair. I did have to pay the municipals for fishing your supposed corpse out of the river," went on Vidocq, even though Javert had already conceded the point. "Everything had to be played according to the rules, including the municipal fee."

"No, no, no, I understand, believe me. I can still hardly believe we'd done this," said Javert, extracting a bulging billfold and a small leather purse from behind his waist-wrap. "Whom did you convince to write this up?"

"Well, you'd better read and find out," grinned Vidocq, accepting the offered gold coin.

Javert squinted and brought the note close to his face, then frowned and pulled back, then brought it close again.

"What the…" he murmured. "'Srs. Daube and Bouille'?"

Vidocq, who had been suppressing laughter for some time now, slapped his knee heartily and let loose a volley of happy snorts.

"You bloody imbecile," declared Javert wearily.

"Don't worry," said Vidocq, smiling, "it's perfectly all right. The requisite copy is already in the archives, and the justice of the peace paid no attention to who signed for you."

"And if he **had** paid attention?" wondered Javert. "How would you have explained to him the signatures of two dead _concierges_ of the old Museum Division? Did you hold a necromantic séance to summon them?"

Vidocq shrugged.

"Look here, what did you expect me to do?" he asked mildly. "We already had to fabricate the body, so why not fabricate the signatories? Someone had to make the Department one imaginary corpse richer, and a trick like that could ruin a medical's career. At least this way the blame couldn't get pinned on anyone specific. Just be glad that it played out well. As far as the Department is concerned, you've been dead since June seventh. Now, whether or not you want to disavow them of the notion is entirely up to you."

"Well, at least you had the brains not to sign it 'Citizens Daube and Bouille,'" grumbled Javert, folding the sheet in half and then again in half so that it would fit into the billfold.

"Do give me some credit," said Vidocq, obviously somewhat offended. "De Treville is a booby, of course, but he's not that big a booby. It was a clean job."

"So it would seem." Javert stared off into space for a second and sighed. "Too bad nothing good came of it."

"We did get some results," countered Vidocq, leaning on the ladder.

"Oh yes!" noted Javert, tilting up his snub nose. "We got a dead widow, a dead servant girl, an emptied-out safe, and at least two agents in mortal peril. Truly excellent results."

Vidocq waved his hand dismissively.

"The house was a _poupard_ – they've been nursing this affair for months. But with you out of the picture, they actually went ahead and did it. And we would have been waiting for them if your little protégé had bothered to send us a word."

"Or had Landot bothered to do the same," parried Javert. "I trust my little brother far more than I ever trusted your pet thief. If Moineau didn't warn us, then he couldn't have."

"You trust too easily. A message is not made any more trustworthy by virtue of being in rhyme."

"No, but it is made more trustworthy if the man passing it isn't a coward and a traitor," replied Javert coldly.

"You just can't tolerate the idea that an ex-thief can be a better agent than that naive little twit you call brother…"

"Do you know why Landot turned on us?" Javert interrupted, his voice saturated with contempt. "Apparently, he sneaked a peek into one of the letters you had him deliver to Martin's box and read you praising to the skies your new agent imbedded with Patron Minette! Two consecutive brilliant moves on your part: to set in writing that we have more than one man in with Patron-Minette and then have one of the men deliver the letter! And Landot matched brilliance for brilliance: he assumed that he was about to be deposed from his position of responsibility and became determined to make you pay! It never even _occurred_ to him that _he _could have been that new agent!"

Vidocq opened his mouth, closed it again, then said through clenched teeth: "He says Montparnasse threatened Agnes."

"He is so full of horseshit that it's pouring out his mouth and right into your ears! Montparnasse has been acting like a lovesick idiot over Agnes for months now. The only things that stood between them were his _largue _and Agnes' brother. The _largue _was nothing much to look at, a lousy scrawny addled kid, but I bet Montparnasse didn't want to cross her parents. Her father's a first-rate scoundrel without even a thief's innate scruples, and you don't want to even know what sort of a creature her mother is."

Javert twitched, then continued: "And then our 'Parnasse had a stroke of uncommon luck: during the riots, his old _largue_ got herself shot at the barricades. Now Montparnasse could marry with impunity, except for the question of money. He couldn't get married without proper togs for himself and his lovely new _largue, _could he? And stylish carriages, and a ceremony in a fashionable church, and an entourage with rose petals, and an orchestra with dancers. Not to mention a nice first-floor apartment for the bride, with a pretty maid and a colored cook from the Islands and a liveried footman. But where to get such money? No sense in carrying on in his usual way and picking off bourgeois stragglers. Stuffing the kitty with one _louis _and one silver watch at a time - why, he'd have hair as white as Jack's here before he could marry! No, this called for a _grand-fanandels_ kind of job. Luckily, they had that Saint-Leon _poupard_."

Vidocq looked like a thundercloud but kept silent, either out of consideration for Javert's infirmity or because he realized that he was in the wrong.

"Now there was only the matter of Agnes' ass of a brother, who'd been acting rather nervous and twitchy as of late. And we can't have nervous and twitchy when a big job is about to go down. Better safe than sorry, reasoned Montparnasse, and probably sharpened his _dague. _Except I bet dear little Agnes wouldn't have it - her brother's the only family she's got, both parents dead early on, brother dearest brought her up, - all that. So what was he to do with an inconvenient in-law-to-be who might ruin everything by bringing the _raille_ down on him? Scare him into silence, plain and simple. Believe me, Montparnasse scares Landot more than you or I do. His knife in the guts is a more certain prospect than the judicial system's hazy threats of five to seven years in Toulon."

"So there you have it," he concluded. "For confessing that he was a spy, your Landot is an understandable and even reasonable coward. But for also selling out the other agent out of wounded self-love, he is thrice a vile traitor."

Javert began rising to his feet. I helped him, then picked up his cap from the ground and gave it to him. He took it from me without thanks and pulled it down low over his forehead.

"I'm going home," he declared to no one in particular and headed out slowly up the alley and towards the street, steadying himself with his hand against the brick wall as he went.


	17. Ch 17

Author's Note: Well, I think we've had enough of Valjean's guileless observation for now. Back to limited third-person.

Author's Note 2: I don't like this chapter at all, but I really need to get some exposition in and also get them all moving to the next scene, so...

* * *

"What in Heaven's name is wrong with him?" asked Valjean, watching as Javert reached the end of the alley and turned the corner.

"Same old," said Vidocq gloomily, "just more of it. Make sure he gets home all right, will you?"

"I will. Does he take anything for these spells, any medicine?"

"Not really," Vidocq said and then added after a moment's reflection: "He's missing a chunk of his head, what medicine can make that all right? Sometimes he eats hashish, with variable results. But I don't he's got any at the moment." He hmmed. "So you're in for an entertaining evening."

Valjean recalled Javert's glassy terrified eyes and fought a sudden urge to grab Vidocq by the lapels of his jacket and give him a nice hard shake.

"I would hardly call watching a fellow human being suffer 'entertainment'," he ground out.

For some reason this made Vidocq stop dead in his tracks.

"Oh, great," he said quietly and looked at Valjean with something akin to helplessness. "Great. Another protector and champion. Dame! How does he do this?"

"How does he do what?"

Vidocq squinted and stepped in close, until they were almost nose to nose. "Don't flatter yourself, Valjean," he said, in a peculiar echo of Javert's earlier words. Then, all of a sudden, his face contorted in a grimace of fury and revulsion.

"What, you think he's going to open his heart to you now?" he hissed. "That you'll be his best friend and faithful dog now that he's decided to be magnanimous towards you? Lord almighty, man, can't you see that he doesn't care a rotten fig? You only exist to him insofar as he can get some use out of you, and I can tell you right now, to save you a whole lot of trouble later on, that the only way our dear inspector could ever find you useful would be if he somehow convinced you to kill him. If he could make you feel _sorry _enough for him to take that sin upon your immortal soul and put him out of his misery. But given that you've already been offered the honor once and turned it down, I doubt he'll bother with you for much longer. Most likely he'll just hand you over to the Prefect to be added to the Surete rolls and wander off to look for some other brute he can irritate to the point of homicide."

"Why would he want me to kill him?"

Vidocq squinted even harder.

"A question for a question: why do you lie that you've only known him twelve years?"

"It's the truth," said Valjean, surprised. "I did not know him before."

"Are you saying you don't remember him from Toulon, when he's been a guard there for practically your whole sentence? Two decades of seeing a man every morning and evening, and throughout the day on random chain checks, and on convoys - and you don't remember him?"

"I didn't say that," corrected Valjean. "I do remember him. But I did not know him. One doesn't know the guards any more than their dogs in Toulon. He was just another young man in uniform."

"No different from any other?"

Valjean shrugged.

"Perhaps a bit less nasty."

Vidocq shrank back.

"'A bit less nasty'? The man who would get put on double shifts for arguing with the warden that so-and-so needs to be in the infirmary and not out in the docks, that what's-his-name needs linen cloth for _patarasses_ or his ankle will fester - the one who stepped in whenever he saw a cudgel raised against one of us, arguing unauthorized punishment? The one whom other guards despised for spoiling their cruel fun with us? 'A bit less nasty'?"

And that graph, thought Valjean, suddenly overcome by nostalgia - my God, that graph and sheet of numbers he brought to captain Thierry that time! With the cost of our dinner beans and the cost of our linen, and how he reckoned it all out: half a sou more spent per inmate's dinner and three sous more per week in linen would yield the _bagne _at least a franc a week per person in labor, and that if they would just allow us some _straw_ to sleep on, it would cost but little and pay off handsomely in lower infirmary costs, what with so many fellows getting sores, and how could you not, with them having you work outside in one set of clothes, rain or shine, then go to bed on hard planks in the same clothes, and so on, and so on, without end... The other guards laughed at him for months. But they stopped laughing once he started his crusade against lieutenant Pillot to be drummed out for laming that kid with his cudgel - no, then they ganged up on him, and what a shit-storm that was, Je-Nie-Dieu was beside himself when they all got two months double duty and a week's pay docked, crowed and crowed how he's ready to believe in God after all, and then the big-shots, the _grand_ _fanandels_, who had money sent them and ate meat every day and held half the galleys in service to them, they held a counsel and passed the hat around for Javert, one old horse thief coughed up a whole _bouton _and even shed a tear, no less than a hundred francs they collected, two months' salary for him then, but when the _barberot_ tried to give him the little bag of coins, Javert took it in his bandaged hand and flung it back it in his face and said that he'd rather chop his hand off entirely rather than take alms from thieves and rapists, that we were all scum, and born of scum, and then he gave everyone in his wing double chains and fatigue duty for a week...

"I kept out of the _bagne_ politics," said Valjean evasively. "A guard was a guard. I did not distinguish between them. I hated them all."

"So when you met him up in Montreuil, you did not notice the change in his temperament?"

"I suppose so," allowed Valjean. "He was much more melancholy then. Did his illness change him?"

Vidocq glanced to the side and rubbed the stubble on his upper lip.

"Look, this isn't the time or the place. The whys and wherefores are immaterial. Just trust me on this. All he wants from you is a chance at dying. That's all he ever wants, from anybody. He's been in my employment since '14. I know him better than anyone still alive on God's green earth. Mind you, he has no religion, no qualms about suicide. So why is he still alive? Simple: he is in debt to me. He had borrowed forty francs from me for something or other, and he still owed me the money when he came to that provincial hole. He could not die with a debt hanging over him. So he lived. He must have thought he'd be able to pay it off and be done with it."

Vidocq's sudden laughter held a distinct note of frenzy.

"God bless the miserliness of the police authorities! Three hundred francs a year! three hundred francs, can you imagine? He had made eight hundred a year in Paris, and even that barely sufficed, and he only had to pay half the rent there! All his possessions went up in chimney-smoke that first winter. When I went to visit him, I almost didn't recognize him. He had become wretched. His clothes were dirty under his overcoat - he had no money for soap or water. When it came off, you could count all his ribs. But he was still alive. He owed money, - not just to me now, but around town as well - and he could not die until he was square with his creditors. So I paid off his debts and told him he only had to worry about me from that point on. I posted him another three hundred francs every year, so that he might keep body and soul together."

"By the time he moved to Paris, he was two thousand francs in the hole. The Paris Prefecture raised him from eight hundred to a thousand francs a year. Mighty generous of them. Plus the requisite eight francs per arrest. So he smelled freedom. He began to spend eighteen hours a day on his feet, always tracking new prey. But then reality checked his ambition yet again. The eight francs per arrest existed only on paper. In the real world, the commissaire took half, because he was the signeur, and his informants took the rest, because Javert was fair, and he gave it to them. That left him with five or six sous premium per arrest. And thus he began to pay down his debt. Two thousand francs, at two or three francs a week."

"He realized, of course, that he'd be dead of old age before he got the required sum together. And he could not part with some of his personal items that might have fetched the price - he is more sentimental than you might think. But then he had an idea. Suppose he died before he had all the cash but willed me a part of his property? Not all of it, mind you, - there's that matter of his brother, - but enough to cover what's left of the debt, about six hundred francs. There's just one problem – I ordered him to fork up the money _before_ he dies, for certainty. A conundrum! And yet not an inescapable one, as he's cleverly reasoned out: if he can't die by his own hand, he just needs to get killed. Now, he can't _have_ himself get killed _intentionally_, but who's to stop him from dying honorably, sword in hand? Seems easy enough, right? Every criminal in Paris wants him dead, after all. He'll be blameless, dead _and_ debt-free! But damned if fates did not conspire against him again. Headfirst into every fray, and not a scratch. Once he's on the scene, knives fall out of their handles, guns misfire, cudgels snap like twigs. And Pantin criminals being both an observant and a superstitious lot, no one even attempts on his life anymore – when he shows at the door, they tremble and follow him like lambs to the prison depot! So now he's started seeking other avenues. The uprising could've done it for him, and yet here he is, still alive, thanks to you, and bloody furious about it. God knows he tried hard that time – almost to the point of sabotaging his work, which is really sinking to a new low for him…"

Vidocq rubbed his hand over his face again, as if washing without water. "God, why am I going on like this in front of you?"

"No, no, it's perfectly all right! I had no idea. Thank you for telling me."

"For all the good it'll do you…" murmured Vidocq. "Look, just… keep this in mind, will you? There's no fixing Javert. So when he asks you to render him the service, turn him down. That's all you can do, and that's all I want from you. Don't try to become his dearest friend and faithful keeper, all right? The last time someone decided to do that, it ended very badly both for him and for Javert."

"How did it end?"

For a while, Vidocq stared unblinkingly into Valjean's own eyes.

"Very badly," he repeated. "He's dead now. That is all you need to know."


	18. Ch 18

Author's Note: Again, a short chapter to prove that the story is not dead. It's just tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk.

AUTHOR'S NOTE 2: Sorry for the caps, but this is important. I have received emails asking me whether I'd removed this story from the site; apparently, they got the email notifying them of an update, but the link included in the email was dead. I'm not sure what could've gone wrong here, so I'm going to try again, and I really hope it actually shows up for everyone this time.

* * *

"Well now! Are you two having fun?"

Both men whirled around. Javert was leaning, or rather sagging, against the corner of the building. The eerie, unhealthy gleam in his eyes was discernible even in the dark.

"You know, this really takes me back. I don't think I'd had two convicts fight over me since I was seventeen. _Dame!_ Hey, don't stop on my account," he said breezily as Valjean took a step back and crossed his arms on his chest. "By all means, continue. Here, I even have a favor for the winner."

Javert reached into his trouser pocket, pulled out a large white handkerchief and began fanning himself with it daintily.

Vidocq raised his hands in mock surrender. "No fighting, corporal's honor. I'm out of here. See you tomorrow."

"Godspeed," said Javert sarcastically and pressed himself closer to the wall to let Vidocq through.

"And don't even think about leaving your room tonight, you hear me? No heroics! I'll take care of Moineau myself!" warned Vidocq as he disappeared into the darkness.

The white handkerchief waved a mocking farewell to his wide retreating back. A few seconds later the hand holding it showed Valjean an indifferent thumb up.

"Splendid. Your first day in our venerable organization, and you already quarreled with the chief. Well done."

"Aren't you technically the chief now?" remarked Valjean. "On account of his being turned out and all?"

"_De jure_ maybe, but not _de facto._" Javert stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. "No one can really be head of the Surete while the Mec is alive. It's a philosophical impossibility. Prefects and their secretaries come and go, the chair of the Second Division acquires fresh arse-prints, but the Mec abides. His is the Surete kingdom, the power and the glory, _sicut in caelo et in terra_."

"Didn't he get superseded once already a few years ago?"

Javert exhaled a little gust of air. Had there been any mirth in it, it would have been a snicker. "Now, where did you hear that?"

"Read it in the papers." Even today Valjean recalled with perfect clarity the smugness of one particular anonymous author who extolled the 'long overdue' pro-activity of the Prefecture, which has finally seen to the dismissal of 'that wolf in the sheep's clothing who prowled our quays and alleys with his nose forever trained on the smell of easy money and vulnerable persons.'

"And what exactly did the papers say?"

"Lots of things," said Valjean evasively.

"I just bet. No, he didn't get fired that time. He resigned. And then, four years and two usurpers later, he returned as the rightful master. Only to be forced to hand over the reins to an heir six months later. Which heir will soon be turned out on his arse as well." Javert scratched his head. "The deathless parable of the vulnerable landowner and the fruitful vineyard..."

There was the whistle of a whip in the air as Vidocq's cab started noisily down Rue de Fontainebleau. Javert cupped his hands around his mouth and roared with all his might:

"Yeah, _bye_! Bye-bye now, you ruddy orange bastard!"

A hand, briefly illuminated by the overhanging lantern under which the cab was passing, made itself visible from the cab window and gave a spirited, if rude, rejoinder to Javert's sally.

"The clod," mumbled Javert. "Why must he be always a plug to every barrel?"

"I'm sorry."

"You, why you? You have nothing to be sorry for. It's not your fault he has such a big mouth."

Suddenly Javert turned to him and frowned.

"I am not keeping you from anything, am I? I'm sorry this business dragged out so long. I'm going home now, so I can give you a lift. I live in number 17 on Rue Pavee."

"Which one, the one near La Force or the one near Quay de la Tournelle?"

"The one near La Force. Not quite in your neighborhood, but not far either. Come, let's walk a bit, there should be a cab waiting by Jardin des Plantes."

I should keep him talking, thought Valjean as they walked. He looks like he could pass out at any moment.

"Javert?"

"Yes?"

"Why did you just call Vidocq orange?"

Javert put a finger to his mouth. "Hmm, should I tell you? Uhm. A puzzle." For a few moments, the finger tapped against Javert's thin lips. "Ah! why not?" he exclaimed finally. "After all, he's been shooting his mouth off about me, so it's only just that I should return the favor. You see, under that pretty blond wig of his, Vidocq is actually a red-head. A bright one, too, like polished copper. This embarrasses him terribly." Javert grinned widely. "So now that you know about it, tell no one. It's a state secret."


	19. Ch 19

* * *

Author's Note: Nope, not dead. And neither is the story, as you can see.

* * *

"…dead serious: it's been twenty years now that we've served together, and he still takes on these ridiculous paternal airs... As if I can't manage my own self and my own affairs without his assistance."

"He's probably just trying to help out."

"Well, he's doing a piss-poor job of it. And I'll tell you something else: I'm getting damn tired of…"

* * *

"…strictly speaking, the new stipulations are just that no one who has a criminal record can head the Surete. But seniority also plays into it. I'm only Inspector First Class, and the Head of the Surete is officially an officer of peace, with a slightly augmented salary to boot. It's actually my commissaire who's getting demoted for this purpose. Monsieur Allard, if you know him. He's pretty fed up with being a _quarter-eye_ in Saint-Marceau."

"It's a bad idea, I think. What does a commissaire know about criminal informants? You're by far a better candidate for the job."

"Trying to butter me up with compliments, eh?"

"No, just being honest."

"You? honest? Well! Call the press together."

* * *

"… was little waiting for me at Toulon except more of the same, and I rather thought I'd outgrown the profession. So I followed the invading armies into the capital and showed myself on Vidocq's doorstep one fine spring morning. He put me through a little test of dexterity and craftiness, which I passed, much to his chagrin. It was a capital little episode. Incidentally, have you noticed that we are being _spun_?"

The innocent question was delivered in precisely the same low and friendly murmur as the rest of the story, and Valjean, whose mind was fixated rather on Javert's voice than his words, did not respond at once. When he had realized what was asked of him, he clicked his tongue and stooped to re-tie a perfectly tied shoelace. Javert paused beside him; Valjean could hear him hold his breath.

Somewhere behind them, a fraction of a second too late, someone also stopped, but not before the slight scuffle of their shoes on pavement reached Valjean's ears.

"You're quite right," said Valjean, straightening back out and looking at Javert slightly askance. "Do you know who it is?"

"I have an idea," answered Javert sourly. "I hope to God I'm wrong."

They had passed by a crooked little fence put up around a plot of barren land to be developed into a Martineaux lodging house, according to a crookedly lettered sign nailed crookedly to the said fence.

"Looks like the construction craze has penetrated at last even Saint-Marceau," remarked Javert. "What is the world coming to?"

"Hopefully, a rejuvenation of the neighborhood."

"Now, the word 'rejuvenation' implies that there is anything here worth rejuvenating to begin with. There isn't. Paris on this side of the bank ends with Jardin des Plantes, as far as I'm concerned."

"There are no neighborhoods which cannot be made prosperous."

"Ah, another pearl of mayoral wisdom from the great Sieur Madeleine! Forgive that I hold my applause, but I fear scaring off our little pursuer."

"How do you know he is little?"

"I have this little feeling about him." Javert brought the fingers of his left hand together, leaving behind half an inch or so space between them. "I also have this bald feeling of him being quite bald."

Valjean skewed his eyes as far backwards as he humanly could without rolling them entirely inward into the orbits.

"He's wearing a cap."

"He's bald under the cap, I'm sure."

"And now he is taking it off and brushing a lock out of his face."

"I still say he's bald under the cap and the hair," asserted Javert. "But you're right. It's time to make sure. Let's go."

And without any warning, Javert turned around, tugging on Valjean's sleeve. Their shadow, who had just emerged from behind the fence to proceed after them down Rue de Jardin des Plantes, was caught several steps away from his possible nook of concealment. To his credit, he did not attempt to run but stood his ground bravely as Javert approached him with huge strides.

"Hello, Sashenka," purred the shadow in a voice that was by no means masculine and at the same time not quite that of a woman.

Valjean could swear he heard Javert's teeth grind together. "It's always Inspector Javert or Agent Javert to you, Marie."


	20. Ch 20

"You'll always be Sashenka to my heart."

"You have no heart, Marie. You're an invertebrate mollusk."

Javert addressed the stranger in the familiar.

"Ah, and you are still so unkind! And in front of a strange gentleman, too." 'Marie' shifted his - name and effeminate intonations notwithstanding, it was doubtlessly a man - small dark eyes to Valjean.

Javert tsked. "You are right. Where _are _my manners? Marie, this is Valjean. He used to be known as "The Jack" in some circles, but that was rather before your time."

Valjean inclined his head. 'Marie' took a small step back.

"You flatter me, my dear, but alas, I'm no spring chicken. I've heard plenty about Jack. Tales were flying about you in La Force twenty years ago, Monsieur," he said admiringly to Valjean. "You were a strange sort: crafty, powerful, and yet somehow with no manner of luck at all. Three escape attempts, was it?"

"Four," corrected Valjean quietly.

"Unbelievable! Out of the chains and re-taken every time!"

"There were some rather keen eyes watching me," said Valjean, glancing briefly in Javert's direction.

"Don't be ridiculous," mumbled Javert. "I wasn't even attached to your ward. It was Mathieu who was watching you _returned horses. _And after him, L'Homme. And I was nowhere near."

"Believe me, no one planned any sort of escape attempts without you in mind. And it was you who apprehended me the second time around, or don't you remember? You and two very nasty-tempered sergeants."

"I remember well enough - two nasty sergeants and yet you broke _my_ arm resisting!"

"You were the only one stupid enough to approach me unarmed! Who approaches a cornered beast unarmed? I could've killed you then and not batted an eye!"

"Water under the bridge," said Javert, cutting off the flow of Valjean's guilty reminiscences. "In any case, Valjean, this is Marie-Bartholemy Lacour. A celebrity in his own limited right - by proxy, as it were."

"Call me Coco," simpered 'Marie', extending a small hand palm down, as though for a kiss. After a second's deliberation, Valjean shook it gingerly with three fingers.

"Dear Coco here was Head of the Surete under Delavau. Or maybe it was under Delavau's little fop of a secretary, Duplessis. Or maybe under both of them. Vidocq and I never did figure that out."

"So unkind," sighed the figure again, taking off his cap and adjusting his bangs in the same way that Valjean spotted him doing it earlier, not so much brushing them upward as turning them sideways. "But then, it is the prerogative of great men to be dismissive of their inferiors." 'Marie' replaced the cap on his head, tilting it rakishly over one ear. "I have long resigned myself to your righteous contempt."

"Plug your fountain and talk business. Why were you spinning us?"

"I wanted to speak with you, but you seemed so preoccupied back at the café… and then afterwards, with that little agent you were throttling…" The fellow twirled his hand in a languid, dismissive gesture.

"So that was you smoking on the corner!" spoke up Valjean, suddenly recalling the bright red firefly.

"Guilty!" smiled the fellow. "But what about yourself, my good man? Are you just a new frog in our little swamp..." 'Marie' trailed off, then continued in a slightly less pleasant voice than before: "...Or could it be that our unrepentant monk Sashenka has finally, after all these years, found himself a new friend?.."

"You don't get to ask him any questions," interjected Javert. "You still have not answered mine."

Even in the darkness, Valjean could see the corners of the young man's mouth droop.

"So he is your new friend, then?" he asked in a voice that was now quieter and duller.

"That is no business of yours."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps it is." The voice had become even softer. "It so happens that I bear news that will be of immense value to you – if you're ready to have them from me."

"What news might those be?" A note of wariness had crept into Javert's voice.

"Will you be kinder to me?" asked the man hungrily.

"Kindness must be deserved. You have proven yourself to be a scoundrel and a backstabber many times over, both to Vidocq and to myself."

"Don't bring my dealings with the Hog into this!" hissed the man. "He has nothing to do with anything. I've never played you or your little Moineau false!"

Javert recoiled as if struck. "What do you know about Moineau?"

"I know that you love him."

"Of course I love him -- he's my baby brother!"

"I also know that he is in grave danger."

"So speak!"

The man paused, lowering his head and scraping at the ground with his shoe, as if in reticence. Finally, he said: "How much is your brother worth to you?"

Valjean's blood ran cold.

"How much do you want?" Javert sounded bored.

'Marie' looked pointedly at Valjean.

"Send your man here away, and we'll talk."

"Whatever news you may have of my brother, he can hear them."

'Marie' shook his head hard.

"No. It's my terms we are discussing now, Monsieur, not the news. That you can share with him to your heart's content. But I prefer our negotiations to be conducted in private. So if you would be so obliging."

And the rogue began backing up towards the crooked fence.


	21. Ch 21

...crunching of gravel under firm footsteps. Valjean heard Javert speak a few indiscernible words to the coachman; then the door of the carriage swung open, and Javert ducked inside to take the other front seat, bending low to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling. The cab rocked slightly with the new weight. Javert picked up the tail end of his sash and swung the door shut - to Valjean's ears, a little more firmly than there was need.

The coachman's whip whistled through the air, and they were rolling.

As curious as Valjean was about Javert's negotiations with the malicious effeminate, he held back his tongue. It was obvious that whatever conversation had taken place between them in Valjean's absence had left Javert in the foulest of moods. The ex-inspector sat with his elbows on his knees and his fingers intertwined so tightly in a double fist that the tendons of his forearms bulged disconcertingly, and there was a slight tremble to his tensed muscles.

"I hope you don't mind if we stop at a place on the way," murmured Javert almost too softly for Valjean to hear him over the clatter of wheels on the uneven pavement.

"Not at all."

"Thank you." Javert held a pause then glanced askance at Valjean:

"Or I could drop you off near your door and then ride back. It makes little difference to me."

"Why bother riding back and forth? Where is the stop?"

"On Rue Planche-Mibray."

"Then let's simply ride through on our way to your place."

"And what about you?"

"I can walk."

Javert shook his head and exhaled, lowering his forehead onto his double fist.

"Listen now, don't let's be so, aey," he said with a strange clipped accent, lifting his face again and staring hard at the coachman's back through the glass of the cabin. "Let's be simpler. I'll drop you off at home after I'm done on Rue Planche-Mibray. Why rub your boots off on gravel when there's a cab ride to be had for free?"

"What's at Rue Planche-Mibray?"

Javert exhaled a doleful little laugh.

"The aim and purpose of my bargaining with dear Coco, of course…that nasty little shit-for-brains cock-sucking son of a poxed bitch."

Valjean, who hadn't heard a litany of profanities quite so foul since his days in the galleys, couldn't repress a start. Javert noticed this and began to laugh a false little laugh, exhaling occasionally through his nose and inhaling with mournful little moans. Finally, the sound lost even that semblance of laughter and degenerated into a prolonged half-moan half-sob. Javert dropped his face into his palms, dragging his fingers across his face and to his mouth.

"Dear God in Heaven, how have I sinned that Thou hatest me so?" mumbled Javert into his fingertips.

"What did he demand of you?" asked Valjean despite his intentions to keep quiet.

For a minute or so, Javert seemed to think it over:

"Sometimes, humiliation is the dearest thing one owns, and selling it procures the most benefit for those one loves," he finally said. And then added: "God, what an idiot I am."

A chill ran down Valjean's back.

"You don't mean to say…" He couldn't finish. Javert seemed to stiffen momentarily then sighed:

"I wouldn't trouble myself with it if I were you. It is quite enough that I will have to trouble myself with it."

"And you intend to honor this agreement?"

Javert aimed at Valjean a heavy gaze so full of scorn that Valjean shrank back into his seat.

"I always honor my agreements."

"There are some things in life that should not be suffered."

Javert lifted an eyebrow.

"You seem to be quite certain that you know exactly what I agreed to."

"I'm not entirely an innocent and a simpleton, you know. I didn't spend half my life at the galleys to be ignorant of these things. It was plenty obvious what that creature was all about!"

"Oh? Very well then. Then what do you suggest I do?"

"If you won't renege, then I don't know what else to suggest. How could you have brought yourself to agree to such a monstrous thing?"

"Would you have agreed for your daughter?" wondered Javert.

It was a heavy blow, but Valjean withstood it.

"I would have agreed to anything for Cosette, but as for making good on the promise – never."

"I see. Are your promises to me equally worthless?"

"Of course not!"

"Why not?"

"Because I know I'm making them to a good and honorable man, not some sodomite!"

To Valjean's surprise, Javert began laughing silently again.

"You seem to hold those two categories for polar opposites," he said finally. "Forgive me if I find this incredibly funny."

"You mean to tell me you don't?"

"Ironically, I don't."

"I can't believe you are defending him."

"And I can't believe a man with such a good head for business can have such a bad head for logic. You must drive your bank accountants crazy."

The carriage rolled onto Rue Saint-Jacques; water glistened in the moonlight ahead of them. For the rest of the ride, they remained silent. When the carriage stopped in the middle of a relatively wide but unlit street Valjean guessed to be Rue Planche-Mibray, Javert said with poorly hidden amusement:

"If it makes you feel any better, you guessed altogether incorrectly."

"About what?"

"About the terms of my agreement."

Valjean's mouth fell open.

"On one level, I almost admire your imagination for inflicting cruelty," continued Javert conversationally. "On the rest of levels - and there are many - I am quite shocked. Didn't realize your still waters ran quite that deep."

When some movement returned to Valjean's frozen facial muscles, he said: "You mean to tell me you've been sitting there and letting me shoot my mouth off for nothing?"

"Oh, I wouldn't call it nothing! In fact, I would call it one of the most entertaining cab-ride conversations I've ever had the pleasure of holding."

With that uncharacteristic verbal flourish, Javert exited the cab.

"I won't be long. Do not follow me," he warned and shut the door firmly.


	22. Ch 22

Throwing one last brief glance back at the parked carriage and confirming to his satisfaction that the shutters over the passenger windows were lowered, Javert leaned over to the boarded up window and rapped thrice with his knuckles.

He had not to wait long for response. A shuffle was soon heard on the other side of the door; the peephole lit up briefly with a soft orange glow and then darkened again abruptly beneath an inquiring black eye.

"Who comes at this hour?" groused an old woman's voice.

"Mother Cibot, let me in for a drink of water, for I'm so famished that I've got no place to spend the night," replied Javert with a smile.

Several bolts slid out of their sockets and the door was opened by a hunch-backed crone well on the other side of eighty. One of her withered hands grasped closed the shawl bundled around her frail throat; the other held high a saucer with a dripping candle stub.

"Took your time, you did, Monsieur Javert," she grumbled in way of greeting and stood aside to let Javert through.

"It's been a busy day, Mother Cibot" said Javert, quitting his cap, inclining his head and stepping over the raised threshold.

"Well, Sieur Bernard is waiting for you, yes sir, he is. Been waiting a while now. We were starting to wonder if you were going to show at all today."

"My sincere apologies. I hope my tardiness has not robbed your household of sleep?"

"Just about, Monsieur, just about. Well, no matter now, go on downstairs, shoo! He's up in his work-room. And look that the two of you don't dilly-dally until the cockerel's crow like last time!"

The last admonition was spoken already to Javert's back as he descended rapidly the spiral brick staircase to the basement. Trailing his fingers along the wall in search of the door handle he knew to be there – the meager candlelight from the Mother Cibot's stub did nothing to dissipate the blackness pooled at the bottom of the deep stairwell – Javert suddenly found himself lurching forward into nothingness as the door was jerked open from within. A scant moment later, a small dense head butted him in the stomach with such momentum that it knocked the wind out of Javert's lungs.

"Whoa!" exhaled Javert, grasping the curly head by the ears and pulling it away. "_Dame!_ Jacques, watch where you're going!"

"M'sieur Javert!" squeaked the head and buried itself once again in Javert's vest, this time with affectionate intent.

"My God, but you've grown huge since last week!" murmured Javert patting the boy on the curly head. "What is your grandma feeding you, yeast? Where's Papa?"

"In his office," said the boy, the pride of having a father with an _office_ apparent in his voice.

"And where are you headed at such a speed?"

"The watercloset," sheepishly admitted the boy.

Javert nodded with a solemn grimace and gave the boy a slight push towards the stairs.

"Well, far it be from me to detain you from such a quest. March on, soldier. We'll chat later, I promise."

At the other side of the corridor, Javert ascended yet another staircase, this time a straight wooden one, and headed straight to the second floor. The door to the office was propped ajar by a bronze doorstop and the office itself illuminated with two small desk lamps. Bernard seemed to be getting his money's worth out of the midnight oil being burned - Javert heard the rapid scritch-scratch of his pen already from the anteroom.

Upon seeing him, Bernard moved to stand and greet him, but Javert raised his hand in warning:

"Ah ah!"

Bernard's hand, which was reaching for the cane propped up against the mahogany desk, immediately reached out to join its twin in grasping Javert's proffered hand instead.

"Oh, Monsieur, you had us all worried!" said Bernard after Javert took his seat in the armchair near the window. "Did something happen?"

"A minor altercation. Whether or not it will be of any consequence quite depends on what you have for me," said Javert. "How's your leg?" he added almost as an afterthought.

Bernard pushed back his chair and pulled a bronze key hung from a black ribbon from underneath his shirtsleeves.

"Well, it's been foretelling rain, but other than that it's no worse than usual - much obliged for your asking, Monsieur. And I have," murmured Bernard as he unlocked the top drawer of the desk and reached inside, "this little bagatelle for you. Jacques brought it in around eight o'clock from Palais Royal."

And Bernard handed Javert a little ball of crumpled paper.

"I owe Jacques a gingerbread man the size of a pony for this, you know," remarked Javert, examining the offering and concealing it immediately in one of his numerous pockets. "He's a spectacularly brave and capable kid. You should be proud."

Bernard flushed with pride. "You don't have to tell me, Monsieur!" he exclaimed. "But, oh, I've had my hands full with him since you've engaged him last month! I can hardly keep his mind off adventures and conspiracies these days. The little scamp has even begun neglecting his catechism. Father Bordin is becoming rather cross with him."

"Don't worry, it's not going to last much longer. I must thank you again for letting him do this. Your son has been of immense help to the organization - and to me personally."

Bernard raised both his hands to his chest and leaned forwards:

"I only wish there was some other way I could possibly show my gratitude…"

"You owe me nothing," interrupted Javert, rolling his eyes. "How many times must I repeat myself? What I did for you I would've done for any other innocent man. You are not obligated to me."

"That's what you think, Monsieur," said Bernard quietly and sadly. "And God bless you for such thoughts - they are the thoughts of a saint…"

Javert rose from the armchair.

"Good-bye, Bernard," said Javert, placing a hand on the man's shoulder and squeezing once. "You know I can't stand that silly talk. Have yourself a good sleep. I'll try to stop by tomorrow or the next day at the latest. Don't get up - I'll let myself out the way I came, there's no need to see me to the door. Good night."

"Good night, Monsieur," sighed Bernard, but the door had already closed behind Javert.


	23. Ch 23

Author's Note I: Yeah, yeah, I know – I know, okay? Thing is, I'm working on a real novel now, so that's where most of my energies are being channeled at the moment. But I'm finding that I can't abandon this. If nothing else, it's excellent practice.

Author's Note II: I know some of you have been frustrated with the number of new characters popping up, and it's understandable. The good news is that at this point in the narrative, you've met most of the new cast, and the storylines are going to now begin closing back now like Russian nesting dolls.

He found Jacques crouching down near the door to the basement. The boy was absorbed in the rather noisy business of trying to bounce a sou off the wall and have it land next to an oblong river-smoothed pebble.

"Practicing 'murmur' volleys?" asked Javert, carefully keeping his voice neutral.

Ambushed, Jacques quickly palmed the sou and jumped up. Had been any lighting in the dark stairwell beyond faint gaslight seeping in through a tiny grated window under the ceiling, Javert would've surely seen the tips of the boy's ears redden.

"It's only with a single coin," mumbled Jacques defensively.

"And will it remain a single coin tomorrow or will it be joined by a companion?"

Jacques lowered his head a bit. Javert sat down onto the wide bottom stair, positioning himself closer to Jacques' eye-level.

"What's the big deal? It's just a couple of sous. And I almost don't ever lose any money – I'm good! I won five sous off Michel yesterday!" boasted Jacques.

"And what does your father think of this?" pressed on Javert, sensing the boy's defensiveness. "Your grandmother?"

Jacques said nothing.

"You don't tell them about this, do you?"

"No," said Jacques quietly.

"Why not?" Javert sounded more curious than judgmental.

Jacques pushed the pebble around with his naked big toe and said nothing.

"Tell me Jacques: is your father a good man?"

"'Course he is!" exclaimed Jacques.

"So why are you doing things that you know would earn you your good father's disapproval?"

"I… it's just a bit of fun," said Jacques stubbornly.

"I'm sure it is, right now. But what about two years from now? Will you always be playing for sous? You're nine now. How long before sous will seem like baby stuff, and you'll be playing for _balls _instead? And what about the day when bouncing coins off the wall will suddenly appear altogether silly, and you'll find yourself seated at a dice table instead? Or a card table? What then?"

Jacques stared stubbornly at his toe, then asked anxiously: "Will you tell Papa?"

"No, I won't. But _you_ should."

"But he'll thrash me!"

"All the more reason to ask yourself why you persist in doing things that you know are so bad that they will get you thrashed by your good father."

Jacques heaved a sigh and kicked the pebble into the corner.

"All right, no more sermons for the day," said Javert. "You're certainly old enough to know right from wrong on your own, without my meddling. What I wanted to ask you about is your traipse through Palais Royal today. Were you alone?"

"No, there were a lot of us. Michel, and Pierre, and the Lyonnais, and Daniel came and he dragged his little brother along, too, although we told him that we're not playing with babies…"

"No babies, huh? What did you play?"

"'Guards and Cossacks,' of course! Michel brought some real bullets, he said he got them from a medical brother in the big hospital! They were heavy and flat, and he said they'd been taken from real soldiers' broken arms and legs after they'd been sawed off! It was wicked awesome!"

"Sounds exciting," said Javert sourly, suppressing a brief flash of disquieting memories. "And your assignment?"

"Oh, it was as easy as always, M'sieur! They weren't paying attention to us at all! We were running all over the place going "bang, bang," and there were these two fat nurses with fat little bourgeois babies all in lace and ribbons, and they kept scolding us, but other than that, no one paid any attention," declared Jacques triumphantly in a single breath.

"So they were easy to mark?"

"Well, it took some work," said Jacques with a business-like gravity so reminiscent of his father that Javert couldn't suppress a smile. "One of them was hiding behind a newspaper the whole time."

"Was that the big man or one of the smaller ones?" asked Javert, knowing full well the answer.

"The smallest of the bunch. He barely did anything interesting. He always just reads. And the real big one was gobbling up some sort of stew, as he always does, or else just drinking wine and picking his nose, so he was boring too. But the other one was real strange this time!"

"How so?" asked Javert with false calmness.

"Well, for starters, he still had those bandages all over his face. And last time, some man had asked him what had happened, and he'd said that he'd gotten burned. I thought then: that must have been some burn - he's been bandaged for months now! Well, today one of the nannies asked him about it, and he didn't say anything, but his friend with the newspaper told her there was an _absence_ in his mouth, and that his teeth hurt a lot."

"An abscess, maybe?"

"Maybe that, I don't know. So not a burn, then. I'm thinking - maybe not an _absence _etiher?"

Impressed by the boy's quick mind, Javert stuck out his lower lip slightly and nodded minutely in approval.

"Oh, and he was wearing this wide-brimmed hat and a long coat with a cape although there was barely a cloud in the sky. But that's not the so strange part. See, today he was sitting there with this very little notebook open, and he kept scribbling in it with a pencil! And then, do you know what he'd do then?"

Javert slowly shook his head no.

"He'd burn the paper! I swear, he must've burned up half his little book that way! He had the waiter bring out a bowl for him with a couple of live coals in it, and he'd scribble and scribble something for a full half an hour and then crumble the bit and toss it into the bowl, and it'd go up in flames!"

"What was he scribbling? Did you get a look?"

"I did!" Jacques was fairly hopping with excitement. "See, I wanted to get closer to them, but didn't have an excuse, right. So I said a prayer to Our Lady and guess what? Michel and I were pretend-dueling, and I lunged, and he parried, and he knocked my sabre clean out of my hand, and it flew right under their table! That was Our Lady answering my prayers, to be sure, 'cause Michel is usually crap with swords, he can barely parry _at all!_ So I went up to them, bowed and asked for it back, and the bandaged man picked it up and handed it to me. He also said a little rhyme to me, which I thought was dead stupid."

"What sort of rhyme?" Javert asked.

"Something about how a little soldier will grow up to replace a big one. I don't remember. It was silly. Rhymes are for babies."

"I see. So what was he writing?"

"Just doodles," said Jacques shrugging. "Hearts, flowers, a puppy dog, arrows. Just pages and pages of doodles. All of them burned."

"Except this one," said Javert, pulling the crumpled ball out of his pocket. "He gave this to you?"

"Nah, he didn't. They were getting up to leave, see, - and a lot earlier today, too! Usually the gendarmes come around to kick us out as soon as the gas lamps are lit, right? And then I'd wait around somewhere where I can spy them through the fence, until they leave, and then I'd have to climb the fence and look for the note in the bushes by whatever gate they come out of. Well! This time I didn't have to wait! We were being turned out, and they rose to leave, too! I made sure to drop the balls on the ground and stay long enough gathering them to mark the gate they left from! and to get the note the first time leaving!"

Jacques finally took a breath, then forged on at double speed:

"But oh, how he left the note was something! He hadn't any made up from beforehand - he'd been writing it right there, in the park! He was crumpling up that last doodle, but he was sneaky, right? I saw him tear two pages out of the notebook instead of one, and he crumpled up one of them and burned it in the bowl, but the page with the doodles he kept in his hand! And when they were walking out the gates, he tossed it into the thorny bushes by the fence. The others didn't suspect a thing! Then as they were going out, I climbed right in and got it – see how scratched up I got!"

Jacques pulled up his sleeve and proudly demonstrated his acacia-inflicted war wounds. Javert nodded with respect.

"To suffer for the sake of the peace and security of your country is a brave and noble thing. Nevertheless, you should probably have your grandma put some iodine tincture on those."

Jacques' shoulders drooped under the bunched up little jacket.

"Iodine stings," he grumbled under his breath.

Javert lifted a questioning eyebrow and gave the boy a light slap on the forehead.

"A soldier like you, a master of recognizance in enemy territory, and afraid of a little iodine? I don't buy it. Go on, your grandmother is still up. Tell her to doctor your wounds and that I said good night."

"And you, M'sieur?"

"I think I'm going to head out the other way. It's not locked yet, is it?"

"No, grandma always locks it right before going to bed."

"Then I'll be off now. And you - you did great today. I'm very proud of you. We'll talk more soon. I definitely owe you for this. Now run."


	24. Ch 24

Author's Note: Yeah, it's a short one, but at least it hasn't been two and half months this time, right?

* * *

Valjean was beginning to doze, head lolling back on the neck pillow upholstered in shabby and slightly grimy Utrecht velvet, when the carriage was suddenly rocked violently side to side, and then Valjean's shocked gaze beheld the carriage door being opened and Javert lowering himself by his hands from the carriage roof and swinging inside feet first, like a highway robber. Momentum propelled him almost into Valjean's lap.

"Time to go home," said Javert, scooted away and shrugged in an effort to keep on his unbuttoned jacket, which had slipped off his bony shoulders during the maneuver.

Valjean goggled.

"Did you just… jump on the carriage roof from a window?"

"What of it?" asked Javert with a hint of concern, as if Valjean was inquiring disapprovingly about his new necktie.

"Why didn't you walk through the door?"

"I thought to surprise and astonish you with my athletic prowess," said Javert gloomily and leaned back, folding his hands gingerly behind his head. The driver started the team slowly down the street.

"And here I thought I once heard you express the opinion that climbing out of windows was unhealthy."

Javert turned his head and stared at Valjean with unevenly colored eyes. Three gas lights reflected in them in turn before Valjean finally got an answer:

"Climbing out of windows is unhealthy when one is confronted by armed policemen."

"But only then?"

Instead of answering, Javert cradled the back of his head once more in his palms and closed his eyes.

"Fine," said Valjean with resignation. "I'll just accept this as yet another manifestation of your very apparent lunacy and make no further mention of it."

"I'm an epileptic," said Javert with sudden harshness. "Lunacy is my milieu."

There was nothing Valjean could say to that.

A few lamps later, Javert sighed. "The portress of that building owns a dyspeptic mongrel bitch. I heard her claws clap-clap-clapping on the ground floor as I was heading out, so I decided that if I don't want the entire street woken up by her yapping, I better not go back downstairs. So I went out the first floor through a very convenient window right above where we parked. Does this satisfy?"

"In full."

"Good."

Some time passed before Valjean decided to speak up again.

"Have you gotten what you wanted, then?"

"Ever heard the saying, 'those who know much age quickly'?" asked Javert. The wide street they were rolling down was generously lit, and each gas light they passed threw into sharp relief the sickly peaks and hollows of Javert's gaunt face.

"You don't look good," said Valjean quietly.

"That's all right – you'll get used to it," said Javert blithely. "And love will surely follow habit!"

"Will you need my help getting to your floor?"

Javert winced and clutched his hands tighter around the back of his head.

"Most probably," he admitted in softer tone.

"How far away are we?"

"Not far. Next turn, then five doors down. Third floor. Won't take long. I just hope…God!.. Valjean, swear to me…"

"Swear what?"

"Ah…" Javert suddenly laughed a high-pitched little exhalation of a laugh that seemed to come entirely from his mouth and not from his lungs. "'Swear here, as before, never, so help you mercy, how strange or oddsoever I bear myself… as I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on, that you, at such times seeing me… never…never…'" Javert winced again, gripped his head harder and fell silent.

Despite the firm promise Valjean had made to himself to take all manifestations of Javert's bizarre personality shift in stride, he still couldn't help breaking out in cold sweat yet again as he listened to the recitation.

"Too bright…" murmured Javert, collapsing slowly forward in his seat. "Too damn bright…"

Someone knocked on the carriage window on Javert's side, and Valjean realized that they had stopped. Reaching over Javert's hunched back, he parted the curtain, expecting to see the face of the dismounted driver demanding his fare but saw instead Vidocq's unsmiling profile. The ex-chief of Parisian secret police was leaning against the door with his eyes fixed on the driver and gesticulating with his free arm. Upon catching Valjean's eye, he nodded slightly and threw open the door.

"Happy arrival," he said glumly. "How's the patient?"


	25. Ch 25

Author's Notes: I know, I know. It's been ages. Just read the damn chapter.

* * *

The patient was unwell.

Javert's right pupil was a pin-point; his left one was a black hole. The corners of his half-open and drooling mouth sagged. This, along with the suddenly deepened creases under his cheeks, made him look like one of the prematurely decrepit and vacant-eyed cretins that one occasionally observes scavenging rubbish heaps in search of rags and bits of leather.

"Checked out," summed up Vidocq, grabbing Javert unceremoniously under the knees. "He'll probably snap out of it soon, but no matter. Let's have him up. One, two, three, lift!"

The ex-inspector's body was extracted from the carriage with great care – greater on Valjean's side than Vidocq's, since Valjean held onto the shoulders and had to be careful not to let the head knock against the carriage door - and arranged in sitting position on the unclean pavement, back against the wall and knees bent. It turned out almost immediately that Javert could no longer hold up his head, and Valjean had to place a hand on his clammy forehead to keep it from lolling about.

"He is going to be furious about his clothes," murmured Vidocq as he fussed with the bunch of keys he extracted from Javert's trousers, finally choosing one and opening the front door. "Always on and on about filth in the streets, and how the public doesn't need any more bloody freedoms, just more public latrines."

They resumed their burden and carried Javert's unresisting body inside, with Valjean's arms clasped gingerly around the chest and Vidocq's maneuvering the long legs.

"Set him down for a second," instructed Vidocq as they lowered the ex-inspector once more to the floor, this time stretched out in a supine position. Valjean winced when the back of Javert's head hit the floor with an audible thump. "He lives on the third floor, in 3E; his door is the farthest down the hallway to your left as you come up. Go and open it, will you? Here are the keys: use the smallest one. I'll be right back."

Vidocq stepped outside and, to Valjean's surprise, dismissed the cabbie without paying him. The cab instantly disappeared around the nearest corner, rather hastier and noisier than the lateness of the hour warranted. As Valjean ascended the creaky stairs, he wondered if the driver perhaps thought that he had just witnessed a murder and, eager to make himself scarce before the assassins turned their attention to the sole witness to their crime, decided to forgo collecting his fare.

Of course, thought Valjean, feeling along the wall first for the door and then for the lock, it could be that the cabbie was an old-timer, and that the Surete had some sort of an arrangement with him concerning payment. A salary and government oats at discount, or some such.

The key turned with barely a click in the well-oiled lock. Javert's apartment was a cool, spacious cavern, with lots of floor space and little to grab the eye. To Valjean's immediate left, there stood a tall metal contraption that looked to be a combined galosh, hat and umbrella stand. To his somewhat less immediate right, several frill-ended carpet runners lined the floor, as if designating a pathway to something Valjean's eyes could not discern in the dark. Dead ahead was a heavily curtained window, or perhaps a balcony door – the dark drapes hung from the ceiling and reached all the way to the floor. Valjean pushed the door open, letting it bump the wall behind it slightly, and thought he heard the sound echo. Propping the door ajar with the conveniently heavy hat-galosh-and-umbrella stand, he headed back downstairs. Already in the hallway, he could hear Vidocq's puffing and grunting.

"Had I known I'd be required to drag your carcass up to the tenement on regular basis, I'd have never let you take the damn flat. You'd've been living in the dormitory just like everyone else. Only one flight of stairs from street to bed."

Valjean skipped down, taking two stairs at once, and resumed his position holding Javert's shoulders.

"Stairs…" suddenly murmured Javert, tightening his abdomen and reaching for the wall in a vain attempt to stand up. Valjean adjusted his grip around his chest and whispered:

"It's alright. We'll get you home. Rest and don't strain to help."

Javert mumbled something indiscernible, as if in his sleep, and then suddenly spoke up in a voice so lucid that Valjean started:

"'Gene?"

"Oh, so you're awake, then?" said Vidocq without much enthusiasm. "Good, stay that way."

"I don't think he ought to..," began Valjean, but Javert interrupted him:

"Where is Isaac?"

Vidocq paused in the stairwell, forcing Valjean to stop as well, put Javert's legs down and looked him close in the face. Whatever he saw there did not seem to reassure him. "Right-o," he said with resignation and picked Javert's legs up again.

"What do you mean, 'right-o'?" asked Valjean. "He just asked you a question."

"There are questions and there are questions," said Vidocq sourly. "Come on, one more flight."

"Where is Isaac?" repeated Javert with some urgency.

"Not here," grunted Vidocq.

"Where, then?"

"Far, far away. Now be quiet."

"Why?" asked Javert with almost childish petulance.

"Because if he were here, he'd want you to be quiet."

The argument must've been convincing enough; the rest of the way to Javert's apartment was traveled in silence.

Inside, the carpet runners on the floor turned out to lead to a high, narrow bed made with military precision. Valjean reached to pull down the covers, but Vidocq shook his head, and Javert's body was dumped unceremoniously right on top of the quilt.

"How often does this happen to him?" asked Valjean while Vidocq lit two candles.

"More and more frequently of late. He's up to twice a week."

"Is he in much pain?"

"No pain at all, as far as I can tell. But I doubt he's comfortable. Sit with him while I put tea on. If he starts seizing or raving, call out."

Vidocq picked up one of the candles and headed to the kitchen.

"Who's Isaac?" asked Valjean.

Vidocq waved his hand dismissively without turning around.


	26. Ch 26

Author's Note: Back by popular demand. :)

* * *

Vidocq returned from the kitchen with a waffle-weave towel which he tossed onto Javert's face. Javert gave it a sniff then spread it out reluctantly across his forehead with his left hand.

"Needs laundering," he mumbled barely parting his lips.

"Don't chirrup. The moisture will do your head good. Put it over your eyes."

"I'm better," asserted Javert's mouth. The rest of him, however, remained as immobile as a body laid out to be waked.

"Any better and you'll be worm-food," grumbled Vidocq, reaching over to help Javert out of his boots and his jacket. "What am I to do about you, my turtle-dove?" he murmured with annoyance after they were done. "I've got places to be tonight, and I just know you'll be up and running around as soon as I'm out the door. Maybe I'll just have your new fellow-friend tie you to the bed," he added, turning his piercing but not entirely unfriendly gaze to Valjean.

Javert said nothing. His eyelashes were no longer fluttering; he appeared to be falling into a slumber.

"Come, come, you faker! Say something!"

"Well, what do you want me to say? I'm not one for useless reassurances. We both know I'll be out of here as soon as my head clears. The only reason I'm even waiting for it to clear is because I'm dead terrified of messing things up even worse than they are already."

"So go to sleep and leave the whole thing to me."

"Spoken like a man who has never had a trouble-prone baby brother. Would you go to sleep if it were your wife in a pickle like this?"

"Yes!"

"What about Annette? Huh? Would you have left her rescue up to someone else?"

There was a pause. Javert remained motionless and with his eyes closed. "Exactly," he concluded after several seconds had elapsed without a response from Vidocq.

"I could give you a direct order."

"No, you couldn't. Them days are gone."

"I'll think of a way," promised Vidocq, took Javert's bunch of keys off the night-table and left the apartment.

One had to admit that whatever his faults, Vidocq knew his agent well: his footsteps were still resounding in the hallway when Javert pulled the folded towel off his forehead and attempted to swing his legs off the bed. This time, Valjean didn't bother making a fuss; instead of trying to actively restrain Javert, he simply shifted his seat on the bed to pin him to it with his weight.

"Nice trick," wheezed Javert after several jerking attempts at liberation. "Effective to the utmost. I've known oxen who weighed less than you."

"You're not going anywhere," said Valjean in a tone that he hoped carried with it enough authority to cut off all further discussion.

"Fine!" Javert sank back onto the coverlet. "I'll stay put. Just give me my jacket back."

"Are you cold?" asked Valjean solicitously.

"_Dame! _just hand it over. I already promised you I won't try to leave. A fine day it is when a police agent is put under house arrest by two convicts," griped Javert as he accepted the jacket and searched its pockets. "Thanks," he said, palming his find and flinging the jacket back at Valjean, who hung it carefully on the back of the desk chair. "Well, since I'm not allowed up, you should go get that."

"Get what?" asked Valjean and then realized a hissing noise was emanating from the kitchen.

"You'll find tea leaves in the red tin, first shelf of the cupboard," continued Javert. "Don't forget to dump the old tea leaves out of the tea kettle and give it two scalding rinses. And be quick about it, because again, since you won't let me up, I'll need you to find the oilcan and light the lamp when you're done."

When Valjean returned with a mug of piping hot tea, Javert was already absorbed in studying a thoroughly wrinkled sheet of paper by the meager light of the solitary candle. Once the oil had been found and the hydrostatic lamp lit, Valjean took in the apartment. Its furnishings were somewhat eccentric. There was a large, high desk with an old chair, its upholstery torn and peeling; the narrow bed upon which Javert was now lying; its night-table; and something like a coquette's dressing-table, with many drawers and a tall mirror bordered by symmetrical wood panels, reflecting the lights of both the candle and the lamp from the corner. The last item was all the more puzzling because it showed obvious signs of frequent use: little jars, boxes, combs, and other toiletry articles covered its surface and a rag of some sort hanged off one of the wood panel corners.

There was no _étagère _with knick-knacks, nor cupboards with plate, nor a card-table – not even a clock on the mantelpiece. There wasn't even a bookcase – just a couple of wide, bordered shelves running along the wall above the night table, the lower one lined with stacks of papers and the upper one with volumes of law codes and, to Valjean's surprise, medical journals. The walls, however, were adorned with two beautiful Persian rugs, one above Javert's bed and another one above the toiletry table, and more multi-colored striped rugs and runners covered the thoroughly scrubbed floor. By the door, a coat-stand held a single greatcoat; an umbrella-stand housed a single umbrella; and beside them stood one spare pair of street shoes.

The apartment seemed to consist only of the one large cabinet where they were now situated; however, the new light allowed Valjean to discern old scuff marks cutting across the wooden floor that even repeated and thorough polish failed to take out - signs that the large sitting room was once two smaller rooms. One of the wall rugs also covered a door, now so long in disuse that it was almost concealed from sight by several coats of paint. In the kitchen, there was room not only for a sink and a tall stove, but also large cupboards, a pantry and a rough-hewn table, which led to further thoughts that the apartment was once much larger and had been split up. Valjean realized that the bathroom and privy probably went to whoever got the other half of the rooms, and that Javert probably used the ones shared between the several other apartments of the floor.

How and why rooms of such size and luxury came to have been installed on the fourth floor of a common five-story lodging house, Valjean couldn't begin to understand.

Thinking of all this - the strange furnishings, the peculiar lay-out of the meticulously clean apartment, the almost English quality of comfort without indulgence, and the general moodiness and meanness of the neighborhood that they were in – Valjean for once had to agree with the modern writers: you _are_ where you _live_.

Vidocq returned with several envelopes in hand. "Your concierge is a ninny. Her door was wide open. How are you holding up?"

"Suspiciously well. I almost think I might be done with this nonsense for the night," murmured Javert without lifting his eyes from the sheet.

"We'll see."

Valjean thought about asking if Vidocq also wanted tea, but then recalled that he had been the one to put the kettle on in the first place; it therefore stood to reason that he'd probably want some as well. He returned to the kitchen to locate and fill more mugs.

He did not, however, close the door all the way behind him.


	27. Ch 27

Author's note: See how guilty you guys made me feel? Four days between chapters - that's, like, record-time for me. :)

* * *

"I brought up your mail," said Vidocq's voice.

"And? Does anyone still love me?"

"Ha! You better believe it. Eyes up!"

Something small whistled through the air and fell on the bed.

"The Crown Prosecutor loves you," gloated Vidocq. "Or rather, he loves a certain Monsieur Daumont."

"Oh, _hell_. Please tell me this isn't another deposition summons."

There was a sound of tearing paper.

"Great. Another deposition summons. I thought the rebel trials were done and over with!"

"See for yourself."

"But what about the amnesty?"

"This one's going to trial for a bar brawl some weeks hence."

"What a joke. First they turn the streets into bloody goulash, and now the surviving rubbish is living it up in taverns. Who is this?"

"A bumpkin from Congourde d'Aix. A mason's apprentice. He got out of that mouse-trap of a house in Rue de la Chanvrerie during the last assault and was pursued through the side streets. Jumped very luckily from the second story window, apparently. A hardy fellow!"

"Why are they only bringing suit against him now?"

"Because he only got well enough to get into a bar brawl now," explained Vidocq. "See, when he was making legs for safety, a couple of bullets grazed him. He got away all right, except then he apparently had to be nursed back to health by his elderly auntie for near a month. Then a couple of days ago, he ventured out of the house for some spiritual sustenance and was recognized by a soldier on patrol while getting sloshed in the wine-shop on the first floor of his aunt's tenement. There were accusations, then counter-accusations; then there were blows; the fellow's wounds got re-opened; the soldier got a bottle broken over his head – and more along these lines. Forty-five by fifteen in the bar, naturally; a number of bottles broken, some crockery smashed, and the cashier's frock stained beyond her laundry-woman's capabilities. The usual stuff."

Deciding that eavesdropping on a world-famous detective and his lieutenant was not proving as entertaining as anticipated, Valjean abandoned his listening post by the kitchen door and came back out into the sitting room with two more mugs of tea. Vidocq was standing with his fingers tucked behind his suspenders and watching Javert peruse his papers.

"So what in the devil's name does he want from me?" asked Javert.

"To take a good look at the arrested fellow and inform the Crown whether he had or had not been on the Rue de la Chanvrerie barricade, and consequently whether the soldier had or had not been entitled to calling him a… what was it?.." – Vidocq lowered his head to read over Javert's shoulder - "…a 'treacherous swine' and sticking him in the ribs with the butt of his rifle."

"Well, I don't see why that should make the slightest bit of difference – no one's entitled to blows from a patrolman unless they're resisting arrest," said Javert firmly. "Idiots, both of them. When do they want my deposition by? July 30th… I don't know. I might manage it, I might not. In any case, for now it'll definitely have to wait." Javert flipped a sheet. "Good of him to remember not to address this to Monsieur Javert. Did you remind him?"

"No, he recalled all on his own, bless him. That's why he didn't send you an official summons – see?" Vidocq leaned over and poked his finger into something on the page Javert was reading. "The form isn't stamped – he didn't let it through the system. Just pulled a clean one from the stack, I bet. And the Prefect's signature releasing you to his authority isn't on it. So this is just a friendly invitation."

"I don't have time to be friendly with him right now." Javert put the summons back into the envelope. "What's the rest of this junk?"

"A couple of private notes, an advertising circular for stationary and a Jerusalem letter."

"How do you know it's a Jerusalem letter?" Javert picked up an envelope and examined its return address with some curiosity.

"I got one from this post-office box a couple of days ago. Bet you a louis it'll be from Mistress Poiret, an indigent milliner recently widowed, in debt from her late husband's gambling habit, with three hungry ankle-biters underfoot and a babe at each breast, the poor, _poor_ woman. Mind you, the letter itself will reek of the cheapest, foulest tobacco."

Javert slit the envelope open with a long, claw-like thumbnail. "Ye-ees, that's the one. Bah! That's not a Jerusalem letter." Javert tucked the letter back into the opened envelope and dropped it the other side of the bed. "That's just plain begging."

"May I?" asked Valjean.

"Be my guest," said Javert absently. He was already engrossed in the next note.

Valjean pulled out the false 'Jerusalem letter' and perused it silently. He was feeling uneasy. The letter was bringing back not only unhappy memories of the Jondrette fiasco but also even more unhappy memories of another kind. Many years ago in Toulon, a cell-mate of his often busied himself in the evenings with letter-writing and sometimes recruited Valjean to copy them, for a sou or half a ration of bread. Valjean had been learning writing from the Ignorantin brothers and was glad to practice his calligraphy. As reading was still not coming easy to him and drawing the letters neatly took a lot of concentration, he hardly paid any mind to the words he was copying diligently onto the pages. Now, over twenty years later, it was starting to look like he had been unwittingly involved in yet another criminal scheme, and the thought nauseated him.

"Why are they called 'Jerusalem letters'?" he asked.

Javert scratched at the back of his head. "Hmm. A puzzle. M'sieur Vidocq, you're the expert on thief lore: why are they called Jerusalem letters? From Rue de Jerusalem? As in, 'Get caught writing this and you'll end up in the Prefecture'?"

"No, it's left over from the days when crusaders figured into them. The usual run of a letter like this fifty or so years ago went as this: 'To most honored Monsieur or Madame Such-and-such; I am the last scion of an ancient family, writing to you out of a wretched furnished lodging in Saint-Marcel, brought thither by the cruel machinations of Marquis Bugbear and Baron Blockhead, but never mind all that. The crux of the matter is that having been forced from my family estate in Bretagne or Auvergne or Provence or wherever else with such haste, I was not afforded opportunity to take with me the ancient artifacts brought to France by my illustrious ancestor Sire Iron-trousers upon his return from the Jerusalem crusades. Being the last of my family, I alone possess the knowledge of where the map to the buried Jerusalem treasure is hidden, but circumstances beyond my control compel me now to seek out help in reclaiming it, and as you had been recommended to me by close and trusted advisers as a person of both sharp intelligence and compassionate heart…' - et cetera, et cetera. You get the gist. The supplicant then asks the addressee to render them a minor pecuniary assistance – no more than several _pistoles_ at first - so that they may return to their native parts, put in an appearance at their family estate, find the map in their father's library or their scullery-maid's corset or wherever it had been stashed, and dig up the treasure, which they would then _naturally_…"

"_Naturally,_" echoed Javert with a shark's smile.

"…_naturally_ share with Monsieur or Madame in boundless and eternal gratitude. If the target is a big enough dupe, he or she will send out the forty or fifty francs asked of them and eagerly await further news. The supplicant might then post as many or as few letters as they please, either from Paris or the location described in the letter, relating their adventures and misadventures in search of the missing family fortune, and always asking for more money to finance the operations. This goes on until the target finally realizes that he's posted out a thousand francs already, that it's already been six months, that there seems to be no progress being made, and that it looks like their spouse was right about this affair all along. They stop sending money, and that's where things end. Usually, there is no complaint made to the police. Although I have to say," – Vidocq turned to Javert – "_we_'ve gotten a few over the years."

"Not too many, but yeah, certainly more than the police proper. They certainly didn't want to go on record. Anyway, these letters got far more diverse and interesting after the Revolution. Vidocq and I have a whole collection of them," said Javert.

"What are some of the variants?" asked Valjean.

"Well, there's the standard émigré pitch: family castle stormed by Revolutionaries and a mob with pitchforks, relatives slaughtered, only survivor by grace of God now addressing you – and so on, and so forth. Those reached their peak of popularity around the mass returns of exiles in 1815. The newspapers stoked the fire by occasionally printing stories of some good Samaritan rendering aid to an indigent seamstress in Brussels or Geneva and then having it sprung upon them that their protégée is actually an heiress."

Valjean bit the inside of his cheek.

"And then there's the Cossack variant," said Javert. "That was quite a popular one until as far as maybe ten years ago. Someone supposedly buried a pile of valuable papers and jewels under their turnip beds for fear of Paris being ransacked by Cossacks, then got struck by apoplexy, leaving no legal heirs to the property, and the letter-writer professes to know where the goods are hidden. All he needs is the money to buy the house, which is always described as a worthless shack, and the adjoining meager plot of land where the treasure lies."

"Do people fall often for such stories?" asked Valjean.

"Not often, but often enough."

"The key here is numbers," said Vidocq didactically. "The letters are sent out en masse. All you need is for one out of twenty to bite, and you've already got a handsome profit."

"I see," murmured Valjean.

"Why, grandma, what bright red ears you have," remarked Javert with a slight smirk.

Valjean said nothing but lowered his head and rubbed the back of his neck. If he was to be with the police from now on instead of against it, being thought a one-time chump far outweighed acquiring yet another blotch on his already permanently corrupted record.

Vidocq laughed.

"Ho-ho! What's this then? Don't tell me you actually fell for one of these?"

"Oh, cut the man some slack," said Javert. All of his opened letters were stacked carefully on top of the torn envelopes beside him, and he was fiddling with a shred of paper. "Everyone falls for some sort of a scheme at least once in their life."

"True enough," acceded Vidocq easily. "I've certainly been duped plenty of times. Pardieu, the ways I've been had in my youth – the mind boggles. Took me years to wizen up. So Pharaoh's right, don't feel bad. No one escapes being made a dupe somehow. Except Pharaoh himself, of course." Vidocq clapped Javert lightly on the shoulder with mock solemnity.

Javert smiled weakly and closed his eyes.

"There's a new species making its way around these days," said Vidocq. "A sort of return to the 'heathen gold' theme, but now with a Mohammedan instead of Mosaic motif. The customer is asked to direct their footsteps to Algeria and purchase a frontier homestead for a pittance. There's usually some story about hidden Bedouin gold attached."

"The industry clearly languishes without a major European campaign," summarized Javert. "God, how tired I am," he suddenly added.

"Good. Stay that way and get some sleep."

"No, it's not that… it's something else. I haven't felt this tired in ages."

"You haven't slept more than five hours a night in ages."

Javert inclined his chin once in a minute nod, then said sleepily:

"When Isaac gets here, tell him not to bother with a cold compress, all right? It doesn't really help that much anyway, just makes my hair wet. Tell him to just sit with me."

Vidocq swore.


	28. Ch 28

"So much for his being done with this nonsense for the night."

"Who is this Isaac he keeps calling?" asked Valjean.

"His doctor," answered Vidocq curtly. "Who will not be putting in an appearance today, on account of his having been dead for the past thirteen years."

"Thirteen years? Does Javert know?"

"One should think so - he was literally about a breath away from him when it happened," murmured Vidocq, lifting one of Javert's eyelids. "He just forgets on occasion. Just can't help himself. It's like with soldiers who get their legs blown off by cannons and then complain of pain in their toes for the rest of their lives. Every time he floats off like this he starts grumbling about Isaac running late."

Suddenly, one of Javert's pale hands grasped Vidocq by the sleeve. "Hey," breathed out Javert quietly.

"Hey yourself," said Vidocq.

"Something… something I wanted to ask you."

"Isaac isn't here."

"I know," said Javert with a rueful smile. "Probably got held up at Hotel Dieu again. No matter. That wasn't it. Do you still have the room description?"

Apparently, this was the shibboleth Vidocq was awaiting, because within the blink of an eye he was sitting behind Javert with a sheet of paper unfurled in front of both of them, close enough to Javert's face that he could read it if he chose.

"Do you want me to read it out loud?" asked Vidocq.

"Not all of it. Read…" Javert frowned. "Read the body description. There was something… something off about it."

"'The body of the widow Montpellier,'" began Vidocq, "'lies supine, with the right hand almost touching the overturned chair and the legs stretched out towards the door of the dining room…'"

"That," said Javert. "Supine. Why?"

Vidocq listened.

"Why supine?" repeated Javert as if in a fever. "She had been hit in the back of the head with a club. One falls on one's face."

"She might have turned over," said Vidocq without sounding convinced. One does not easily turn over from a blow to the back of the head.

"But the coroner ruled instantaneous, didn't he? As it ought to have been. So he must've been the one to turn her over. There was a smear of blood on her," – Javert raised a hand to his stubbled sunken-in cheek and made an odd caressing motion over it – "right here. And the threads of hair plastered facing towards the ear on the right side. Don't you see? Here," he continued, "turn me over."

And Javert moved aside his pillow and turned over onto his belly, burying his face in the sheet. Vidocq waited for him to settle into it, then grasped him by the shoulder and turned him gingerly over.

"You see?" cried Javert triumphantly.

"I don't."

"And the teeth!" continued Javert without taking notice. "She was toothless!"

"She was old," shrugged Vidocq.

"Yes, yes!…" Javert winced. "Old, yes, too old not to have any teeth…Her maid said she liked beefsteak, remember?"

It was now Vidocq's turn to frown. Javert attempted to speak further but broke off mid-word, whined like a dog with a bellyache and scrunched up under the coverlet.

Suddenly there was a timid knock at the door. Vidocq rushed to answer, opening the door a few scant inches and conversing quietly but urgently with the intruder; then he closed it again and returned to Javert's bedside. However, it turned out that he was only returning for his hat.

"I have to go," he said with a sort of enraged helplessness. "Damn it! If he says anything more about this in his delirium, write it down, will you? Anything at all, you hear? He's onto something with the turning-over thing. I was wondering about it myself. And with the teeth probably too, damn his lunatic eyes."

He paused with his hat in his hand, then resolutely put it on, went into the kitchen and returned with another glass of water, which he cautiously fed to Javert in small sips, as he held him up by the shoulder. His desire to hear if Javert was up for saying anything else on the subject of the murdered widow seemed to be outweighing the need to rush off.

"I want green tea," murmured Javert capriciously.

"Green tea he wants," snorted Vidocq. "How's about some black caviar, red wine and a blonde woman while you're at it?"

"Pass on both… and as for the woman...you'll do just fine."

When the glass was empty, Vidocq lowered Javert back onto the pillow. "You keep thinking about all this," he instructed. "Tell me when I come back in the morning."

"No time to think," slurred Javert. "Gotta shake."

Apparently the byword made sense to Vidocq, because he nodded without a trace of a smile.

"So shake."

There was another knock on the door, even more timid than the previous one. Vidocq nodded at Javert again, then raised his eyebrows meaningfully at Valjean, extended and shook a cautionary index finger at him like a schoolmaster, and was out the door before Valjean could ever say goodbye.


	29. Ch 29

Javert didn't seem disposed to dole out any more investigation pointers. He had turned on his side and curled in on himself, occasionally giving a full-body twitch under the blankets.

For several minutes Valjean meditated on the chock of unruly black hair sticking out from inside the cocoon of blankets, thinking sentimental thoughts of caterpillars and butterflies and the mysterious ways of the Lord. After a while, he discovered that he was no longer thinking of cabbage caterpillars but rather of cabbages themselves and realized that he had grown quite hungry. He had not had much more than a bite to eat in the café earlier in the evening, and a glance at his pocket watch told him that even that was three hours ago.

'Only three hours?' thought Valjean with some doubt as he rose quietly from the desk chair and headed to the kitchen, trying his best to tread lightly and not make the floorboards squeak. 'Feels more like three years.'

The investigation of the kitchen yielded little. The cupboards were as bare of food now as they had been when Valjean opened them in his earlier search for the tea leaves. In the first hanging cupboard, there were several tins with peeling red enamel: one with unsifted flour, one with some sort of ground herbs and one, to Valjean's boundless surprise, filled to the brim with very fine sand. On the top shelf, there were some ceramic plates, a couple of coffee mugs dyed beige on the inside from heavy use, and a couple of pretty china tea cups without saucers. In the second cupboard, there was a straw bowl with some unshelled sunflower seeds and a dead cockroach. In the third one, Valjean found a large red ceramic bowl with a raised lid that locked firmly into place with a bronze clasp, ostensibly to keep the foodstuffs safe from mice; upon opening the contraption, he discovered in it several stale biscuits and a browned, wilted quarter of an apple.

'Well!' thought Valjean as he concluded his survey of the domain. 'No wonder he's as skinny as a rake.'

From the bed in the sitting room, as if in response to his thoughts, there came an unintelligible mumble. Valjean shut the kitchen door behind him and came up to Javert's bed.

"Did you say something?" he asked.

Javert rolled onto his back and repeated his mumble. It sounded like 'bomdjar'. Valjean deliberated for a second whether Javert was speaking a foreign language or just mangling French, then tried again:

"Pardon?"

"Bottomdrawer," said Javert, slightly louder and more distinctly this time, and turned resolutely back onto his side, concealing himself once more in the coverlet.

Valjean returned to the kitchen but the only drawer he found there was the cutlery drawer; that held a small assortment of spoons and forks, but no food.

He came back out.

"There's nothing in the cutlery drawer."

"Bottom drawer!" insisted Javert's muffled voice from his cocoon. And then, inexplicably: "As always. Don't panic."

Valjean looked around the room. The dressing-table in the corner had drawers, lots of them, but it was unlikely that Javert would keep food so close to poisonous cosmetic pastes and powders. (What Javert was doing with those and in such quantities was a subject Valjean did not feel morally prepared to undertake just yet.) There was also the desk. It was slightly less unlikely that Javert would keep food in there, thought Valjean. He himself used to stash away an occasional nibble in his writing desk during his stint as mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer, for those occasions when there was simply no time to go out for lunch. Javert was a busy man; it stood to reason he might do likewise.

Valjean looked at the desk indecisively. The bottom drawer was larger than the others, probably intended for large-format binders and ledgers, and unlike the others, it had a keyhole. The key was nowhere in sight, but thinking that Javert wouldn't have invited him to look there if it were locked, Valjean tried it anyway. It slid open easily, revealing a very large album bound in dyed blue leather.

Valjean pulled out the album. Unless Javert was in habit of keeping unleavened flat-breads between the pages, it was highly unlikely that the album contained anything nourishing. Beyond that, the drawer was empty. 'He must have been hallucinating that doctor again when he was speaking,' decided Valjean.

Now more curious than hungry, he opened the album and almost dropped it on the floor.

On the very first page, there was a full-length, professionally rendered and delicately shaded pencil drawing of a skinned corpse.


	30. Ch 30

A sequence of thoughts and images snowballing in horror and gruesomeness flashed through Valjean's head. Most of them involved a blood-crazed Javert, dark alleys and various cutting implements of differing size and sharpness.

Valjean tore his eyes away from the hapless victim and turned them to Javert's bed. The inspector slept on, or seemed to, still facing away from Valjean and oblivious to his discovery.

Valjean looked at the picture again. The torn-up body seemed to have been depicted floating in water, with long hair billowing in the stylized but finely rendered ripples and waves surrounding it. It was difficult to discern anything more than that; since the only source of light dissipating the room's darkness was the hydrostatic lamp by Javert's bedside.

With only a second's hesitation, Valjean picked it up and carefully set it onto the desk, laying the album before it and seating himself at the chair.

By the light of the lamp, the shallow ripples around the body transformed into uniform lines of dense writing. After several fruitless minutes of trying to decipher even a sentence of it, Valjean gave up. For one thing, judging from the few words he did manage to make out, the text was entirely in Latin, and Valjean knew very little of it despite his almost-decade-long career as gardener for the nuns at the Petit-Picpus convent - unlike piety, Latin resisted transmission by geographic proximity. But even more importantly, the handwriting was completely, utterly and irredeemably illegible.

Hang on a minute, thought Valjean. This isn't Javert's handwriting.

He flipped a page. A body organ of some sort stared him full in the face – something elongated and ridged, resembling an extremely fat maggot, and somehow slimy-looking despite being rendered in crisp graphite. This time the writing around it was accompanied with many arrows, bordered by frames of varying thicknesses and emphasized with exclamation points and question marks. Several small "windows" ran along the edge of the page depicting the organ's hidden cellular structure.

An anatomy journal, thought Valjean.

The next ten or so minutes taught Valjean a fair amount about the firmness of his nerves and the stability of his stomach. After the general anatomy came the pathological anatomy, which the author's obvious artistic gift rendered nothing short of horrifying: a parade of cirrhotic livers, gaping wounds, lungs consumed by tubercular phthisis, shattered bones and gangrenous limbs decorating about a hundred pages of the album, every picture meticulous, confidently executed and clearly drawn not from memory or hearsay but from up-close and personal encounters. Valjean examined them all with the diligence of a medical student cramming for end-of-the-year exams, only skipping over the obstetric cycle, which went on for about twenty pages and featured such graphic depictions of women in labor that Valjean couldn't bear to look.

After the initial shock of the carnage wore off, the pictures started looking more beautiful than frightful - the glossy shading of the slick surfaces of internal organs, the graceful posing of the skeletons, the peaceful looks on the faces of the dead, beatific even with their insides exposed or altogether excavated from their bodies.

A hundred or so pages into the journal, anatomy gave way to something called histology – the word headed a new section and was inscribed on the title sheet in French and in large, shaded block letters. Histology proved to be much duller pictorially than anatomy: most of the images were little more than quick schematic outlines of internal organs, muscles or bones surrounded by more square "windows" delineating examples of healthy and variously damaged cells of the corresponding tissues - all of it surrounded by more cramped miniscule writing. Then pictures started becoming more and more sparse, supplanted by pages and pages of text. It was easily more hand-written text than Valjean had ever seen in a single volume; he had no doubt that were it put into print, each page of the large-format journal would easily yield ten or so pages _in quarto_. And then, as if the author had exhausted himself, the writing stopped altogether, breaking off almost mid-line. Several pages after that had been left blank.

Illustrations resumed only in the next section, which resembled an architect's sketchbook in that it consisted of dual sheets: one of paper and one of translucent rice-paper. This allowed the artist to make a composite drawing, one on the sheet below and then another one on top of that. These illustrations had nothing either gory or scientific about them. They were simply sketches of figures in motion, such as a fledgling artist might make while sitting in a sidewalk café and watching the passers-by. The rice-paper covers on them were left blank. There were women here, in layers upon layers of lace and cloth instead of laid bare for all the world to gaze upon; construction workers in large-brimmed hats; grisettes rushing somewhere with boxes and packets and bourgeois promenaders. Some of the people were drawn as if observed from rather high up. It was unclear whether the author had really wanted to branch out from illustration into art or was simply honing his skills in between – or was it already after? – medical courses.

Valjean flipped over a lovely sketch of several gamins at play and saw that the rice-paper cover of the next sheet bore a delicately shaded drawing suggesting a man with long hair and in shirtsleeves asleep behind at a table with his head in his folded arms. The sketch underneath was a rougher outline of the same, executed with excellent eye to position but without much detail. Together, they formed a complete tableau and were nothing short of beautiful. The next sketch showed the same man, still asleep but now with one of his arms stretched out towards the viewer at an angle that even Valjean recognized as wonderfully ambitious even for a competent artist to undertake: the man's fingertips almost seemed to be touching the paper from the inside. The sketch after that, however, was rather more bizarre and seemed to signal a return to the earlier medical subjects: the man was sitting in his shirtsleeves on a chair and smoking a cigarette, one long leg bent at the knee and the other stretched out and propped up elegantly on the rail of a balcony. The rice paper overlaying him bore a detailed and intricate diagram of a human brain, with particular attention being paid towards the section near the ear – a whole quiver's worth of arrows lead away from that part and towards various blocks of text at the margins.

Valjean flipped away the rice paper with the brain and instantly recognized in the sitting man a young Javert. There was absolutely no mistaking that intense round-eyed gray stare from underneath black eyebrows, or the frown stamped like a brand right above his nose. Javert was looking out the window and smoking a thin roll-up; he seemed either deep in thought or vexed at something. Underneath the sketch, there was a title, not scribbled this time around but written out with care and even some embellishment: "Sascha."

Valjean was ready to flip over to the next page when he heard a shallow gasp. Mortified, he turned around. Javert was sitting upright in the bed and staring right at him with the expression of perfect terror.


	31. Ch 31

Valjean's first reaction was to let go of the album and push away from the table, as if that would somehow make him un-see everything he saw.

"You're awake," he said stupidly.

Javert continued contemplating him with such horror that Valjean began to fear for what remained of his sanity.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to pry. You said to open the bottom drawer, and so I…"

Javert moved as if to stand. His expression did not alter.

No, thought Valjean, this isn't madness. No more than the usual. This is rage.

Resigning himself to accepting a blow if it should come to that, Valjean stood up from the chair and waited. Javert rose slowly, took several shaky steps towards to table, and grasped its edge with both hands, leaning on it, as if the small exertion had sapped his strength.

Now that he was standing, it was clear that Javert was not looking at Valjean at all. His gaze had alighted on him only because that was its natural direction after he had sat up on the bed. As he moved across the room, Javert carried this fixed gaze before him, like a blind man; now that he stood by the table, he seemed to be contemplating in the same terrified way the door to the kitchen. His mouth opened and closed slightly, like it had done back at the tavern, and a bead of drool was once more collecting in its right corner. Every once in a while, his throat convulsed in a shallow swallowing motion.

Convinced now that was witnessing another fit, Valjean wondered if he might not make use of Javert's oblivious somnambular state to put the album back into its drawer, but then suddenly, Javert sat down behind the desk, leaning his knee into the bottom drawer and propping it shut. His horrified expression melting into something like petulance, he reached for a pen and a sheet of blank paper from the stack. Having obtained both, he placed his left hand onto the sheet to keep it steady and began 'writing'. The pen, which was absolutely dry of ink, left behind only faint scratches.

From time to time, Javert made dipping motions with his right hand, which missed the still-lidded ink-well by several inches. After covering the sheet about half-way with invisible writing, Javert mechanically replaced the pen - it promptly fell flat on the table, since he also missed the quill-stand - and blew lightly on his work. He then reached for another sheet of paper, and his unseeing fingers upset the carefully aligned stack. Unlike all of his previous missteps, this one seemed to register, because Javert frowned, pulled all the paper towards himself, and began to reassemble it into a single stack once more, with the used-up sheet forgotten at the bottom of it. But the more his hands tried to even the stack out, the more disarrayed it became, until so many corners poked out of it in so many different directions that it began to resemble a massive white peony.

Valjean observed all this with morbid fascination.

Eventually, Javert's fruitless shuffling began to slow; finally, he blinked, and his re-focused gaze shifted towards the papers he was grasping.

"Welcome back," said Valjean, uncertain that he would be heard.

Javert exhaled something between a wheeze and a grunt. Judging by the grimace that instantly twisted his mouth, this was unintentional. He coughed, set his papers down, and, lifting his right hand to his mouth to wipe it, asked hoarsely:

"How long?"

"About two minutes," said Valjean.

Javert attempted to stand, but his knees did not hold him; he fell back into the chair and inhaled deeply through his nose.

"Let me help you back to bed," offered Valjean.

Javert turned his head and looked at him. The twin vertical folds between his eyebrows deepened.

Only now Valjean remembered the album still clutched to his chest.


	32. Ch 32

Quick scribble, just to keep things going:

* * *

"What are you doing with that?" asked Javert in an oddly mild tone.

"I was just… you were calling out for it."

"I was?"

"You kept repeating – 'bottom drawer', 'bottom drawer.' I opened it and found this."

"Oh," said Javert and directed his attention once more to re-assembling the stack of paper in his hands, this time with quick and precise motions.

"I flipped through it," confessed Valjean. "I'm sorry."

Javert paused, frowned at the papers, then began flipping through the stack, giving each sheet a quick but careful squint-eyed once-over.

"Of course you did," he said. "Why are you sorry?"

"It's your album. I hadn't the right…"

"Right to what?" said Javert. "You thought I wanted it; it's only natural you'd look at the thing. What did you think? Aren't they nice pictures?"

"Very nice," agreed Valjean. "A bit on the gruesome side."

Javert shrugged slightly as his fingers went through the papers. "Nature of the profession. This was Isaac's. He was a surgeon at Hotel Dieu when I met him. It was not a pleasant living. A few months after I started in the Paris police, I was sent to the hospital to deliver a witness subpoena to one of the surgical interns there. There had been a bad construction accident that day - collapsed scaffolding compounded with a traffic accident. Men with crushed limbs lay on stretchers everywhere - the surgeons could not keep up - it was pandemonium... I asked about my witness. A medical brother pointed me to an operating room. I waited. Eventually, he came out and ordered an orderly bring him a basin with water and soap."

Javert had now recovered the pen-damaged sheet from the bottom of the stack and was staring at it, as though reading his reminiscences from those faint ghostly scratches.

"I tried giving him the subpoena," he went on, still staring vacantly at the sheet, "but he just looked at me and said: 'And you. You will also stay.' I tried to explain that I was not an assistant, that I was on duty, but he grabbed me by the sleeve and pulled me into the operating room. I spent the next two hours holding down thrashing and screeching men while he sawed off their mangled arms and legs. When we were done, I felt ready to drown myself in a barrel of brandy, and he - he hadn't a tense muscle in his face. Took the subpoena, thanked me and sent me off with a smile. A man of steel nerves..."

With that, Javert crumpled the sheet into a ball and tossed it into a wastebasket under the desk, where there were already two more. Then turned his head towards Valjean and made a sucking noise with his tongue against his teeth.

"You ought to eat," he said with some perfunctory concern.

"You also," said Valjean.

Javert nodded and stood up from the table and put his hands on the middle of his back, stretching this way and that, as though he'd been sitting at the desk for hours.

"May I have that?" he suddenly asked and nodded at the album in Valjean's hands.

Valjean relinquished it to him. Javert sat back down and flipped it open about a third of the way through, to one of the pages dealing with the anatomy of the face. This time, however, Valjean noticed that in the bottom left corner, underneath the lovingly detailed rendition of a man with his jaw and cheek sliced open with a saber, there was another drawing – a very small and hasty one, all firm lines and no shading – of a man sitting behind a desk, face first in his work, with waves of stylized steam rising from his curly head which he was clutching desperately.

"That's Isaac." Javert smiled a small wan smile. "His only self-portrait."

The portrait wasn't really much of one. The only things Valjean could infer from it were that Isaac had curls and wore trousers that were somewhat short on him.

"One evening," continued Javert, "when he was studying for some exam or other, I'd dared imply that I had had a more exhausting day at work, so he should be the one to go out and buy us some dinner. So he sketched this out in several seconds and tossed the album at me. Only he miscalculated the force of the throw, and the damn thing closed mid-air and split my head open with the edge - see this brass fastening? Blood everywhere. He had to stitch me up afterwards. How's that for irony?"

Javert closed the album.

"Go downstairs to the porter's lodge," he instructed Valjean. "She's going to have a pot of soup on the stove. Feel free to partake – the soup is for me. I'll be down to join you soon."

* * *

Valjean was on his third bowl of thin cabbage soup when he saw a spot of light in the hallway. A second later, Javert walked in with his hydrostatic lamp. He seemed almost restored.

"Please tell me there's still some left," he said, setting the lamp onto the table. "I recall how much you used to put away in Toulon."

"No more than I was given," said Valjean, tipping the pot slightly towards Javert to reassure him that the soup was not yet all gone.

"You were given enough to feed a team of oxen," countered Javert, filling his own bowl. "Which was only fair, I suppose, since they expected you to perform the work of two teams."

Valjean chewed thoughtfully on a crust of bread. The memory of a peculiar moment came back to him, of a time just past the initial daze that followed his incarceration but before bitterness began brewing in him in earnest. He had been breaking rocks in the quarry with his mates, when, surprising even himself, he spoke up, addressing no one in particular: "How queer life is! I had been brought here for stealing a loaf of bread, and now the government must give me one every day for free."

The two new kids were so stunned that they lowered their pickaxes – they had never heard Valjean utter a word. But Brevet roared with laughter, and clapped him on the shoulder; then Valjean began laughing as well, until a passing sergeant yelled at them to shut their traps and get back to work.

I could've just kept on like that, thought Valjean. What stopped me? Why did I grow so horrid? Plenty of others were there for trifling offenses, lesser than mine even, and they were gay enough.

"Homesick?" Javert smiled like a dog, with his mouth slightly open and all of his teeth and gums showing.

Valjean couldn't answer, so he ate more bread.


	33. Ch 33

Author's Note: Oh, don't even start.

* * *

For a few minutes, the only sounds in the lodge were discrete slurps and spoons scraping the ceramic bowls. Finally, Valjean decided that he'd had enough, tipped his bowl towards himself and snagged the last bit of cabbage with the last big spoonful.

Truth be told, he was not sated: the soup was more broth than substance. However, Valjean had come to realize in his life's experience that he was really a thwarted glutton, and that unstopped, he might perhaps eat a whole side of beef in one sitting and still have room left over. That for the most part he had never been given the opportunity to indulge and develop this deadly sin into a full-blown vice, Valjean considered the very salt of providential wisdom.

No, better not think about beef and salt anymore, thought Valjean and pushed the bowl away. He felt somewhat annoyed at the meal on Javert's behalf. Whatever Javert was paying the portress for this meager fare, it was too much. The soup had not even bacon in it. Valjean's memories of the years lived with his sister and her children were growing dim, but even so he could still remember that they, the poorest of the poor in their village, had had bacon in their cabbage soup, and not just on the holidays.

Javert did not seem nearly as bothered by the quality of his food. Having cleaned his bowl twice, he stood up, put it into the pile of dishes in the sink, and came back to the table looking almost as alive as he had when Valjean saw him at the start of the evening.

"Is this all you eat these days?" asked Valjean. "Seems rather thin for a man your size."

Javert snickered. "What a diplomat you are, Valjean. If you're still hungry, I'm sure I can scrounge you up something else." His eyes searched the lodge and alit on something on the windowsill.

"I'm all right. You, on the other hand, had next to no dinner."

"I had two bowls of soup," protested Javert, retrieving a saucer-covered clay jug from the window and placing it on the table, next to the near-empty soup pot.

"Call that soup?" said Valjean with a slight unconscious accent, a relic of his long-forgotten parents and his childhood at Brie. "There weren't even no meat in it!"

Javert shrugged and lifted the saucer from the jug. "I rarely eat meat."

"Have you not enough money for it?"

"I just have no fondness for meat."

"And so you live on cabbage soup, and biscuits and apples..."

"I eat other things, too," said Javert defensively. "Like milk. Will you have some?"

Valjean declined with a shake of the head and watched Javert fill a chipped mug halfway with milk from the jug. "And _larton brutal_," he said, nodding towards the heel of black bread left over in the bread-basket. "No white bread even?"

"White bread is too refined; it isn't good food. And why are you concerned about my diet?" asked Javert as he sipped his milk. "I've always eaten like this, and I'm still alive."

"Alive! barely, if you ask me. I bet you wouldn't fall over half so much if you just ate more."

Javert closed his eyes, drank up the rest of his milk, and lowered the mug. "Odd to hear you say this," he said, licking the milk mustache off his dark upper lip. "Isaac used to tell me the very same thing. Only in different words and with a German accent. 'How can you expect to regenerate anything resembling neural stability if you stay chronically malnourished?' Every other evening or so, for five years straight. He tried pushing meat and white bread on me, too."

"Smart man," said Valjean. "You should've listened to him."

Javert exhaled with resignation.

"Everyone's an expert on my health. First Isaac, then Eugene, now you... And yet I'm still here. Funny that."

He pulled the lamp closer to himself, pulled a very wrinkled sheet of paper out of his pocket and began studying it closely. Valjean leaned over the table to get a better look. The sheet was covered in pencil drawings of animals, flowers, stars and other minutia. Noticing Valjean's interest, Javert pushed the paper his way.

"Can't make heads or tails of it," he complained. "We never agreed on any sort of code. Thought it'd be safer in the long run, but I'm starting to think it was a bad mistake. Some times you just can't hope to coast through on intuition…"

"Is this from your brother?" asked Valjean, studying the pictures. After the magnificent showcase that was Isaac's album, they looked like a young child's idle amusements.

_Tiens,_ thought Valjean. One anatomical album, and suddenly I'm an art critic!

"He passed it to me through a boy playing in the Palais Royal. He was having early supper there with his so-called 'colleagues'." Javert's lip twitched in a slight grimace of disgust. "You've met them all before, incidentally. During your charity escapade a year and a half ago. The one that went so very sour on all parties involved. When you climbed out the window so adroitly right before my eyes. What? did you think I didn't know?"

"I did think so," admitted Valjean. "You never ordered your agents to restrain me. I was sure you didn't recognize me."

"To be honest, I didn't. After we found you missing and the window ladder swinging, well, my stomach sank then. So I went back to examine the bed where you were sitting, and I couldn't believe my eyes: half the rope on the floor had been cut. And not just cut, but sawed through painstakingly with a tiny saw-blade. Where were the eyes of the soldier untying you, that's what I want to know. He didn't even blink when I rubbed his nose into those rope-ends. 'Uhgh, duhh, I dunno why they be so, M'sieur Javert, you said 'untie' so I untied.' The imbecile... My agents must've thought me mad - I fell to the floor then and there and nosed along the floorboards with my arse in the air like a bloodhound for a good quarter of an hour. But I found it - I did! That saw-blade of yours _and_ its sou-piece box. And then all the questioning began, and everyone who deigned to speak to us described in detail what a queer _dab_ their mark was, with his old clothes and mild ways and bottomless pockets and monstrous strength, and god damn, did I kick myself then!.."

Javert shook his head.

"I might have met them all, but I wouldn't remember any of them except Thenardier," said Valjean. "It was dark, and they wore black masks. And they had skipped formal introductions, so I don't have their names either. Are you saying there was a police spy among them?"

Javert smirked.

"It wasn't Thenardier, was it? Please, tell me it wasn't him!"

Javert stood up.

"Let's go back upstairs," he said. "This sort of talk isn't for rooms with windows opening into the street."


	34. Ch 34

Author's Note: Various changes are being made to previous chapters to fit better with the developing plot.

Author's Note Two: Can you believe I've been writing this sucker on and off for four years? Four Freaking Years! If any of the original readers are still with me, I am f-ing impressed! You're the best, guys!

* * *

In the room, Javert put the lamp on the desk and sat down to study the sheet. Valjean went to stand next to him and looked over his shoulder.

"So your brother passes you notes through a boy?"

"He passes me notes any way he can," said Javert. "And not just notes." He paused. "And not just him."

"What are these drawings about?"

Javert sucked his teeth. "Would that I knew," he said with frustration. "Have you any ideas? My head is still foggy."

Valjean considered the paper. There were on it, arranged in no particular apparent order or pattern: a bird, two stars of unequal sizes, a fish, a tree, a heart pierced with an arrow, a horse, a book, and a few other items Valjean could not immediately identify on account of the faintness of the pencil marks delineating them.

"Perhaps it is a rebus?" he suggested.

Javert's lips moved silently for a moment or so as he thought about it. Then he said: "Unlikely. And yet… His French is very good – better than mine, actually - but he wouldn't trust it enough to conceal a message in word games. On the other hand, he seems to be getting bolder with impromptu rhymes. Perhaps his confidence is building."

Javert rubbed his forehead. "You know what he said to the boy I sent to Palais Royal to watch him? A little improvised rhyme about how the little soldier will grow up to replace the big one."

"Him passing the torch to the young agent?"

Javert nodded. "The boy told me the rhyme was stupid. I have to agree. It was dead stupid. The child didn't understand the hint, - he doesn't know to watch and listen for signals of acknowledgement. But the rest of the gang were sitting right there, with wide open ears! Who knows if any of them had caught on?…"

Javert rubbed his forehead again and pinched the bridge of his nose, hard.

"They were in Palais Royal?" asked Valjean incredulously. The specter of a small army of armed figures in black silk masks rose before him. "All of them at once?"

"Of course not_ all_ of them at once," snorted Javert. "Patron-Minette numbers at least half a hundred men and women altogether. Only the four heads of the concern take occasional corporate supper at Palais Royal."

"It's odd to think of these villains up and about in the daytime, mingling with regular folk," said Valjean. "When I met them, they seemed to be entirely creatures of shadow."

Javert looked at him with a combination of pity, disgust and mild curiosity.

"Don't tell me you are one of those hysterical cases who ascribe villainy to a physiological terror of all things good and pure, like the sun, or crosses, or parks with flowers and children…"

"I'm not, but even so, the thieves I knew did tend to keep night hours," shrugged Valjean.

"The thieves you knew,…" drawled Javert. "And who might they be, then?"

Valjean said nothing.

"Pals of yours from days of yore or more recent acquaintances?"

"I'm not giving you any names," said Valjean firmly.

"Oh, there's no need for that," muttered Javert. He was staring once more into the sheet with doodles. "In fact," he said playfully, "how about I give you their names instead?"

Valjean looked at him with worry. Half a minute passed. Javert continued to stare into the paper, frowning and occasionally making odd noises in the back of his throat. Valjean's worry grew and grew. Finally, Javert smirked and said:

"How's that for a jape? Scared you or what?"

Valjean exhaled noisily. "No more tricks like that, if you please."

"Fine," said Javert in a quieted voice, and added with an odd emphasis: "Let's have a different sort of trick."

Still squinting at the sheet, like a pharmacist trying to decipher a doctor's scrawled prescription sheet, he opened a small drawer right under the desk-top and retrieved from it a pencil stub covered end to end with tooth marks.

"See, I may not know your thief pals by name, aside from the characters I and the rest of the world encountered at the Champmathieu trial," said Javert, poising the tip of the pencil over the paper, "but I'll do you one better. Want me to recount your _marche-route_ from Toulon to Paris that time you cleverly "died" after falling from the Orion?"

Moving the lamp closer to himself, Javert began tracing carefully the contours of the drawings. As he finished each little figure, he listed in order all the villages, hamlets and market-towns where Valjean had stopped during his final flight from Toulon north through the Haute-Alpes. Valjean could hardly believe his ears.

"…Grange-de-Doumec… Perigeux… post coach to Paris," concluded Javert, drawing the last ray to a star. "Well? How did I do?"

Valjean was dumb with shock. Javert had only made one mistake: Valjean had never stopped at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. But even that was no great error. Valjean had planned to stop there, but at the last moment, the sight of the local gendarme sunning himself on a bench near the village church spooked him. So he backtracked about a mile south and stopped instead at a forester's hut. The forester had been an old _galerien_ himself, and, like Valjean, a reformed poacher. They fell to talking about rifles and ways of pouring good lead shot; then the forester attempted to change the topic to techniques of coin counterfeiting and solicit Valjean's opinion on how to make good forms for that. At that point, Valjean quickly made his excuses and retired for the night to the corner allotted to him: the forester sounded too much like an _agent provocateur_. But even that would explain nothing, since Valjean told him nothing of his rambling itinerary.

"This might come as a shock to you, but you followed a well-trodden path," went on Javert, as he contemplated the now sharp drawings. "Every convict who runs from Toulon thinks he is inventing the wheel when he takes this turn or that one, stops at this town or that one, buys his clothes from this fence or that one. In reality, each one follows the route which a hundred escaped convicts had trampled before him. The more successful a route is in bringing a man to Paris, the more men are likely to hear about it from him at the galleys when he's denounced and recaptured. Or when his pals are taken in and carry his stories back to those he left behind down South. He that has ears, let him hear. So it goes."

Javert set down the pencil, then moved it slightly so that it would be parallel with the edge of the table.

"So it goes," he repeated and stood up. "Yes. It is good. Thank you very much for your tremendous help. I have got it."

"What is it?"

Javert picked up the lamp from the desk, turned it down and said with an air of solemn satisfaction:

"It is definitely not a rebus."

And he crossed the room towards the vanity set.


	35. Ch 35

Author's note: Warning – chapter contains an intentional glaring anachronism for no reason other than it amused me.

* * *

At the table, Javert began ruffling through drawers and opening in turn all the small jars lined up by the mirror to look inside and sniff them.

"What are you doing?" asked Valjean.

"I'm getting ready."

"For what?"

"For my weekly dry goods marketing!" snapped Javert. "Don't ask stupid questions."

He picked up from the floor the large leather case leaned against the wall by the vanity, placed it on his knees, undid several of its buckles, and retrieved from it a toilet service in Japanese porcelain, which turned out to contain a collection of tiny jars and brushes worthy of Michelangelo.

Faced with this embarassment of cosmetic riches, Javert seemed momentarily at a loss. In the mirror, Valjean saw him purse his lips slightly to one side in thought.

"Spring, summer, autumn or winter?" mused Javert out loud.

Here it comes again, thought Valjean and took a couple of nonchalant steps towards the dressing-table, to be on hand in case Javert's mind went off the rails again.

"Well?" Apparently, Javert would be answered.

Valjean looked at the jars. He had bought just such a make-up case for Cosette several years ago - her first make-up case, in fact. "Something no fifteen-year-old girl should be without," as he'd been warned by the pert young sales girl at Herbaut's, where he had stopped to pay Cosette's milliner's bill. Cosette's enthusiasm with her present was boundless, until she discovered that the array of powders and pastes secreted in the case lacked two shades of peach which were to be of vital importance that season. Ever the optimist, Cosette declared almost immediately that all was well, and that this was a perfect learning opportunity, for now she would have to be just that much cleverer about mixing her colors. But still, the error stung. From that point on, Valjean left absolutely all feminine purchases in Cosette's hands and simply signed the bills when they came. Moreover, despite Cosette's magnanimity, he conceived a secret horror of all matters pertaining to the arcane arts of feminine toilet-making.

Or whatever the hell was going on here.

"I haven't even the beginning of an idea," he said honestly.

"Come, come!" said Javert incredulously "You raised a girl child into a woman. Didn't she teach you anything about these things?"

"The only question she ever posed to me on the subject was 'Daddy, how do I look in this?' And I only ever needed one answer: 'Charming.'"

"Hm." Javert scratched his cheek with the tips of two fingers and winced. "Well, no matter. The decision requires thought, but luckily I require a shave. One will combine the useful with the even more useful."

He stood up, replacing the still-unbuckled leather case against the wall and pushing the toilet service away towards the vanity mirrors and went to the kitchen to fill a basin with water from a metal cask. Valjean, meanwhile, was sent to the linen cabinet to fetch a towel. Minutes later Javert sat at the vanity again, with a small cake of soap in one hand and a razor in the other, and regarded Valjean in the mirror.

"Spring, I think," he said, and began lathering his cheek eagerly and sloppily, like a youth of seventeen.

"What does that mean?"

"I'm trying to decide what hue to dye myself for tonight's excursion," finally explained Javert. "I need to decide the overall look before I can start in on the details. The seasons stand for a combined effect of complexion, hair color and eye color. A very useful sort of classification. Mostly has currency with public women, dancing girls, and society coquettes."

What a jolly company, thought Valjean: fallen women, dancing girls, society ladies, - and Javert. There's an image I'm unlikely to forget any time soon, God help me.

"Surete agents have come to mark it for use as well. Vidocq is quite extraordinary at make-up, but he's also rather lucky, in this respect," continued Javert. "He's pale and red-headed, whereas I'm dusky and brunet. I've always got the devil's own time disguising myself. Women have it easy by comparison."

Javert tried the razor blade with his forefinger, hissed and brought the digit to his mouth. "Aya, what a dunce," he lisped softly through half clenched teeth. "Just sharpened it three days ago, no kidding. Forgot _completely_. Where is my mind, oh, where? where has it flown to?.."

With that sing-song, Javert began shaving himself.

It only took a couple of blade strokes for Valjean to finally achieve comprehension of what the agent was getting at. He also realized that he was becoming weary of always being several steps behind Javert in conversation, like a Mohameddan wife whom custom compels to trail her husband in public.

"Vidocq told you to stay put," admonished Valjean.

"Oh, he knows me better than that. How can I stay away? My baby brother is out there."

"How old is he?"

"What does it matter? He's younger than me. Should I live to be a hundred and lay withering from old age on a cot in Les Invalides, he'd still be my baby brother."

"What if you have another attack?"

"I won't. They come regularly, and they end regularly." He paused. "At least mostly regularly."

"I shall come with you, then."

Wide grey eyes looked at Valjean in comical astonishment from the mirror. "Perish the thought."

"I thought you wanted me to lend you help, to join the organization."

"Join it, yes - as a foot-soldier, not a field-marshal! You'll cock everything up for me!"

Javert switched to the other cheek. "No, no. Go home; sleep... Make yourself tea; rest in the armchair; read your bloody adventure stories. If no news of me comes back within a couple of days, someone else will drop in on you. And if they don't find you on location, then…"

"…'Consider your entire person forfeit,' yes."

"Jolly good, well done. You're far more quick than you like to pretend."

Javert finished and wiped his face with the moistened end of the towel.

"Not that I didn't know that already," he noted with some smugness.

Clean-shaven, he looked somewhat older and even more worn out: rakish dark stubble had masked a slightly sagging jowl line.

"How come you trusted me earlier this evening but won't trust me now?" asked Valjean.

"Earlier this evening, you were only playing a walk-on role. If I take you along now, you'd be at least a supporting actor and very possibly a co-lead. I know you're a virtuoso liar, but lying isn't the sum and total of acting."

"How is being a thief and pretending to be an honest citizen so different from being an honest citizen and pretending to be a thief?"

Javert leaned forwards towards the mirror.

"I think you mean to say," he murmured, examining his face closely, "'How is being an honest citizen and pretending to be a thief different from being a thief and pretending to be an honest citizen _pretending_ to be a thief?'" Javert sighed theatrically. "Oh, Valjean, Valjean… Valjean, Valjean, Valjean… I'm starting to regret involving you in all this. You'll break my head open with your puzzles before long, I'm sure."

He leaned back in his chair and opened the make-up case once more. "And you never did answer me: spring, summer, autumn or winter?"

Valjean thought back to the happy days of puttering in the front garden of the house on Rue Plumet and watching little Cosette chase butterflies in her school-girl's merino gown.

"Spring," he said with assurance.

Javert smiled. "Spring it is," he replied collegially to Valjean's reflection in the mirror, then lifted a hand to his head and, in one careful but swift motion, pulled off all of his hair.


	36. Ch 36

Valjean was silent for a few seconds, then said: "Will you permit me a remark of admonishment?"

Javert, who was once more rummaging through the large leather case, hummed into it inquisitively. The hum was muffled and all but lost in its nethers.

"If you want me dead, there are far quicker ways of doing it."

Javert responded by picking something out of the case, considering it briefly, then replacing it in the case.

"Of course, I grant you that I may, in fact, collapse with heart failure at some point in time tonight," continued Valjean. "But already this is looking like an unreasonable gamble on your part."

Javert dove out of the case. The mirror reflected something like surprise on his freshly-shaved face and something like a rag clutched in his right hand.

He looked blankly at Valjean, who stood half a room away with his arms crossed peevishly on his chest; then somewhat less blankly at the rag-like thing in his hand; then even more blankly at Valjean again.

"Eh?" he finally asked.

"I'm saying, if you're trying to kill me with shock, it doesn't seem to be working. You've already fired a dozen volleys my way, and I'm still standing. Frankly, I'm not sure what else you might have left in your arsenal."

"You leave my arsenal out of this," warned Javert, shaking the mysterious rag with affected menace at Valjean's mirror-reflection. "Convicts!... The same everywhere, the lot of you. Always going on and on about my arsenal…"

Javert's complaint trailed off as he lifted the case off his knees and placed it back up against the wall. Once more, he neglected to lock it; this time, he had also neglected to position it the right side up. The case immediately fell open, and Valjean saw that it was full of wigs.

"Arsenals aside, I'm rather in the dark as to what you are talking about."

"Oh? so you haven't been intentionally driving me mad with mysteries and revelations all evening?"

Valjean began making his way leisurely towards Javert's chair.

"First you turn up alive. To learn this alone must have cost me a decade. Then you turn out to be an agent of the Sûreté, which was less supernatural but also perfectly strange. You are an inspector. Since when do inspectors affiliate themselves with the Sûreté?"

"Since 1814," said Javert flatly. He was busily stuffing his head – which Valjean could now see was not bald but shaved very close - into the mousey-blond wig he had been clutching. His success was intermittent: as soon as one side of the wig seemed well-positioned, the other would slide. However, Javert did not seem put off by the Sisyphean labor and was content to progress in minute increments. There was something philosophic about his brisk yet unhurried adjustments.

"And then you tell me that I am obligated to join up with the Surete as well, or it's back to the hulks," continued Valjean

"You aren't obligated to anything," interrupted Javert. "The choice is yours and yours alone. If you would prefer the hulks, well…"

"And what of your mysterious illness?"

"Some mystery! Half my head had been shot off in Russia. I'd like to see you fare better under the circumstances. I'm lucky I'm not a dribbling idiot! - though I won't lie, I've heard people argue otherwise, sometimes quite convincingly."

"That you are not lucky?"

"No, that I am indeed a dribbling idiot."

"And what about just now, with the hair trick? What was that?"

"A trick, what trick? It was a wig, you ninny! What, you think I owed you a warning? Is your heart that weak already that you can't handle being startled by a wig?"

Letting go of the hair, which was still sitting comically askew atop his head, Javert picked up a brush and a small ceramic tile. Opening two small boxes and a jar, he spat onto the tile and began mixing a color, periodically grasping a longish blonde lock hanging low over his left eye, and leaning in close to the lamp to compare its color to the one being mixed on the tile.

"Are you finished with your opening statement, Monsieur Crown Prosecutor? May the defense have the floor?"

Javert smeared a bit color onto a minute comb and began applying it to his left eyebrow. Valjean watched him attentively and stifled laughter. Javert and Cosette turned out to share an endearing and curious habit: both of them held their mouths slightly open as they applied paint to themselves.

"In points of order. Yes, I am indeed not dead. This vexes you. I understand. You have seen the administrative communiqué printed in the Moniteur. You are outraged. An organ of the press has lied to you. My condolences. The piece had been composed by Vidocq and myself over a bottle of some vile liquid its vendor had the balls to call Burgundy. Vidocq insisted we include a bit about temporary derangement. They kept that. I wrote in a little apostrophe to Justice being a severe dam who sometimes eats her own cubs. They edited that out. In short, you were deceived. So was everyone else, including the Prefect of Police himself. Don't feel slighted."

Having arrived at this point, Javert switched eyebrows.

"Onto your second point, where I am suddenly an agent with Vidocq instead of an inspector with the Prefecture. There is little suddenness about this, I assure you. Your ignorance of the fact does not undo it as a fact. I have been an agent with the Sûreté since I returned from the Russian campaign. I have also been an inspector with the Prefecture concurrently, at Vidocq's behest. The Sûreté needed a liaison with the municipality, someone spotless and trustworthy. My record of service, both at the galleys and in the Guard, was unimpeachable. Vidocq had promised me earlier – years earlier, when I was still adjutant-garde-chiorme in the galleys - a police career of arresting criminals instead of inspecting walk-ways and gutters. The municipality could not do likewise. I chose Vidocq. Monsieur Henry – "Bad Angel" Henry, if you ever heard of that personage - designated me an inspector, salaried me accordingly, gave me a numbered rattan and sent me on my merry way. I've been with Vidocq ever since, excepting the years when I was alone, meaning, with you."

"With regards to your having to choose between Sûreté service and the hulks – if you are desperate not to do it, I suppose I can arrange for a more conventional parole system with you. Vidocq would protest, but he is no longer in any position to press me. I do not think you will ask me to do this, though. You would not be comfortable with anyone else supervising your lawfulness."

"Oh? So sure, are you?"

"Quite sure," affirmed Javert without an audible trace of irony and began rubbing yet another color mix – this time a powder – into his face and neck. "Moving on. My mysterious illness is no mystery at all – I received a head wound in Russia and had been epileptic since. Since epilepsy does not tend to dispose people to the sufferer, I like to keep it to myself. I usually do a good job of it. You directed me for five years and never had an inkling. What else was there? Ah yes, the wig. I wear it on account of sometimes having to wear others. Better to have little hair of one's own. Neater, too. No footholds for lice. This accounts for the last of your terrible mysteries, I believe."

Javert finished powdering and rubbing his face and turned to face Valjean. With his large grey eyes now softened by blonde eyelashes and eyebrows, his skin whitened, and his long-haired wig finally affixed to his head as needed, - Valjean did not even notice when that happened - Javert looked astonishingly unlike himself. Had he met him in the street, Valjean would have thought him a phlegmatic Dane, and perhaps a poet.

"In conclusion, I move that you are an old paranoiac, and I rest my case."

He could no longer help it. Taking in all at once this new blond Javert industriously brushing his fingernails clean of powder, the spacious room with its faint scent of cloves, the coquette's dressing-table in rosewood, and the wigs spilling in a pile by the wall, Valjean burst out laughing.

Later he would struggle to recall when he had last laughed in this way. He would not succeed.


	37. Ch 37

Author's Note: Bet you thought I forgot about this again, haven't you?

* * *

"You're not going."

"I am indeed going."

"I won't allow it."

"Who are you to allow me anything?"

The words came somewhat slurred, as Javert was undoing with his teeth some stitches on the high collar of a worn gentleman's street jacket at least a decade out of fashion.

"I'll follow you."

"Do that, and I will hit you."

"Fine, hit me."

"Over the head, with a brick, several times if necessary. If you will not be obedient, you will be unconscious."

And Javert began pushing into the split-open collar a wide flat bit of leather – an anti-garroting measure, Valjean realized. His insides tightened with unease.

"How can you even entertain the idea of going? I've dealt with these people before – they were going to torture me, and I hadn't even done anything to them! What do you think they are going to do to you, a police agent, their sworn enemy? They'll tear you limb from limb!"

Javert snorted.

"What melodrama! You should write operas, Valjean."

"You need a bodyguard!"

"No, what I need is a good night's sleep, a decent breakfast, and then some more sleep for good measure."

Javert unstuck a threaded needle from the small round pincushion nestled by the mirror and began stitching the collar back up.

"If you really want to be useful," he continued, "stay here and arrange for all three. My laundress will be coming by around seven in the morning, so you may pick up my second set of linens from her and give her the ones from my bed. Also, I will leave you money to buy me two eggs for breakfast. And water, buy water when the carrier comes around. Three buckets – they are all in the kitchen, stacked near the stove. But for now, I am going, and you are staying. In fact," he said, tearing off the thread and putting on the jacket, "I'm about to show you just how going I am and how staying you are. Do you see that candle on the windowsill? Bring it to me."

Valjean obeyed. Javert took the pewter candle-holder from him, pinched off the burnt part of the wick and lit the stub from the lamp.

"You will hold this," he said, handing the candle back to Valjean, "up to the window nearest to the kitchen, and you will move it about, - up and down, side to side, any which way - so that I see the flame dance from outside as I walk away. You will do this for five minutes - I trust you have a watch on you. If I see the flame go still, I will know that you have set the candle down and left the premises to follow me. Likewise, if I see the flame go out and not reappear – there are phosphorus matches on the mantelpiece – I will know that you've absconded. And then…"

"…'Consider your entire person forfeit,' yes."

Javert smiled.

"Always knew that saying about old dogs and new tricks was just slander."

Opening a drawer, he retrieved from it several coins, a folded pen-knife, a narrow-brimmed cap of brown velveteen, and a small flask with something sloshing audibly inside. The cap he placed on his head; the coins he stacked on the table; the knife and the flask were dropped into a trouser pocket. Then he patted himself down, cast a vaguely searching look about the room, and looked at Valjean with a frown, as if to say: tell me what I've forgotten.

"The note!" said Valjean. "You left it on the table."

Javert blinked.

"That I did," he said.

He walked up to the table and picked up the note. Valjean followed him with the candle, setting it down.

"Yes," said Javert, laying the note back down. "Yes, yes. Thank you. Good-bye."

And he headed towards the door. Valjean stood in his way.

"You did not take the note."

"If they find it on me, I'm a dead man."

"You did not take a weapon."

"One of mine against all of theirs, I'm also a dead man."

"Where are you going, Javert?"

"To do my duty and save my brother. Move aside."

"Why won't you let me come with you? I will not say a word. I will be dumb as a fish."

"You have no role in this farce."

"Say I am your relative."

"You and I hardly look like members of the same species, much less the same family."

"Say I am your valet."

Javert flashed his teeth.

"You forget that I am a ruffian now. Our kind does not employ staff."

"Say I am also a _fanandel._"

"And should they pull us apart, how long will it take before they catch us in a contradiction about your record, or your acquaintances, or your aliases, or your family? Do you expect to play 'Jean the Jack' to them and impress them with a stolen bread-loaf?"

He moved forward, but Valjean grasped him by the lapels, stopping them both in the open doorway.

"Say something else then!"

They looked intently at each other: Valjean with resolve masking dread, Javert with condescension masking ire.

"Say whatever you must," persisted Valjean. "I can't let you go alone to your death like this. We can pretend to be… There are other reasons for two men to travel together at night. I can pretend…"

He trailed off, his whole face burning. However, he did not look away.

For a long moment, Javert simply held his gaze. Then he removed his cap, leaned slowly in until their noses almost touched, - Valjean remarked a tiny mole above his flaring left nostril – and said in a sibilant and throaty whisper that Valjean had never before heard from anyone in his life:

"If you can't even bring yourself to speak it, Valjean, how do you expect to pretend it?"

Raising his hand to his chest, he grasped Valjean's fingers, held them for a fraction of a second, then detached them firmly but gently from his clothes, and stepped through the doorway, replacing the cap on his head. Slack with shame and helplessness, Valjean let him pass.

"Don't forget the candle," said Javert without turning around as he walked down the hallway. The molding stucco of the walls absorbed and muffled his words. "I'll be watching for it."


	38. Author's Interlude

INTERLUDE:

It has come to my attention that some people like to gather in distant corners of The Interwebs and moan about how I am engaging in "cracked-out revisionism," and that I "claim to know Javert better than the author who wrote him." I also have defenders, who say that on the contrary, my view of Javert is teh bestest evar and shouldn't be questioned on any account.

I'm guessing the persons involved don't see the irony of arguing in black-and-white terms about interpretations of a character whose very point in the book was to serve as a warning against black-and-white worldviews.

Anyway, thanks for all your reviews, guys, praising and critical alike. I seriously appreciate your continued attention and involvement in my work - even if it is OMGcracked!out!revisionism! and actually dares to go down paths other than the paved highways of barricade-slash and bridge-angst. :)

I sort of stepped away from the fandom at this point – I'm writing a real novel, with original characters and all that jazz. Interestingly enough, despite the novel having nothing to do with Les Miserables, its two main characters bear very discernable imprints of Valjean and Javert as developed in this opus. Goes to show that you can leave behind Les Miserables, but it will never leave behind you.

This story has not been abandoned, though - too much effort has been put into it. So keep hope alive.


	39. Ch 38

Standing in the warm draft of the half-open window, Valjean moved the candle up and down slowly.

He felt as defeated and empty as he did after accidentally discovering the imprint of Cosette's love-letter to Marius in her blotting-book. In that moment a month and a half ago, - a lifetime ago! – he had felt his life's purpose desert him. He saw then that Cosette had grown up and found a lover to dote on; he, who had hitherto been everything to her, was now only a father – an obstacle to her happiness and not its object.

Now, looking out from Javert's sparsely furnished apartment on the fourth floor of a shabby tenement building into the deep shadows of the quiet and well-lit streets of the Saint-Gervais quarter, he sensed something else slipping away. This time, it was not something he had and cherished, like Cosette's love and undivided attention, but something that he seemed on the verge of attaining. And it was moving away from him, as inexorably as Javert was disappearing into the depths of the dark city.

The only human being in the whole world who knew him entirely, both as the beastly convict and as the saintly philanthropist, - though he smirked at the former and sneered at the latter – was leaving him.

Valjean had no doubt that Javert was in mortal danger. The feeling was a plant fed by an extensive system of roots: the memory of Javert bound to the post in the tavern at the barricades; Vidocq's tirade earlier that evening about Javert's perverse inclination to suicide; the helpless self-loathing he saw flash in Javert's eyes as he had come to after his second attack at the desk.

The fact that he had gone out unarmed.

Specters of the masked bandits of Patron Minette rose before his eyes. Valjean saw Javert subdue them once with a few well-chosen phrases, but as a representative of the city police, armed with a massive lead-headed cane and protected by a squadron of officers of peace. Now he was facing them as a man, armed with a pen-knife and protected by a small strip of leather sewn into his collar.

Valjean cursed the timid, guilty part of himself that still shrank in Javert's presence and let itself be silenced and dominated. He should have not allowed that stubborn ass walk out the door unaccompanied.

A sudden gust of wind suddenly fluttered the candle flame, and Valjean tried to shield it with his palm as he shut the window. But the candle had already gone out.

He grabbed the box of lucifer matches from the mantelpiece, but the candle would not relight. After going through four matches without success, Valjean cast his eyes around for something more readily flammable. His eyes alit on the waste paper basket.

Valjean pulled out of it a wad of paper, straightened it out, tore off a corner, lit it with a match and then relit the candle from it. He did not even know why he bothered – the watch he placed before him onto the windowsill told him that five minutes had already passed from Javert's departure, and he was free to stop the signaling. But he felt he ought to leave the candle burning in the window anyway – if for no other reason then as a beacon to Javert, a sign that someone was awaiting his safe return.

Valjean was about to re-crumple the paper and toss it back into the basket when he noticed that his sooty thumb had left a smudge on the sheet.

In the smudge, thin white letters stood out clearly.

This was the sheet Javert had scratched at impotently during his fit with a dry metal pen.

Grabbing a pinch of ash from the fireplace, Valjean coated his fingers and began carefully rubbing the sheet from edge to edge, bringing out more and more impressions of letters. Javert had been contemplating his brother's secret message before the onset of the fit – perhaps in these scribbles, some hint lay of the instructions the note contained. He had failed to follow Javert, but if he knew where the agent went off to, he could at least provide reinforcements.

When the entire sheet was dark gray, Valjean read the first line:

_Hier wird keinem das silbernes Messer in den Rücken gesteckt._

And underneath it stood in French:

_No one gets struck in the back with a silver knife here._

Uncomprehending, Valjean read further:

_Hier werden keine silbernen Messer in die Rücken gesteckt._

And underneath:

_No silver knives are stuck into backs here._

These lines covered half a page, the last one breaking off at "_silbernes_." Having read them start to finish twice and finding no sense in them, Valjean set the sheet aside with a renewed feeling of pity for Javert's condition. Perhaps these lines held some secret meaning to him, or perhaps they were nothing but ravings set to paper, but it chilled Valjean to think of the strange forces in Javert's head that compelled him to sit down once a week to his desk, blind and deaf to the world, and write out lines in French and German like a schoolboy.

The page holding no answers to where Javert had gone, Valjean crumpled it back up and switched his attention to the page with doodles left by Javert on the table.

The contours of the drawings were more visible now that Javert had drawn over them in coal pencil. There was a Sun with six asymmetrical rays; to its right, a childish sort of attempt at a rose; between and underneath them, a little bird sitting atop of a heart pierced with an arrow. A fish swam below, away from a wolf. Underneath them was a book. There was a rifle also on the page, in the bottom left hand corner, and a horse right by it. That was it.

Of all the drawings, only the figure of the wolf, which was seated and had its maw extended upwards in an apparent howl, was a familiar one. Valjean pulled from his pocket the card he received in the mail inviting him to the Surete meeting and compared the drawing with the printed figure on the shield. They were clearly the same.

Valjean looked at the heraldic beast of the Surete, then at the fish, then at the wolf again. Something about Christ, perhaps? Or sin, guarding against sin?

_Meleus in umbra pugnabimus_. The Spartan motto. 'We shall fight all the better in the shadow.'

So intently did Valjean study the drawings that he did not notice his fingers smudging them until he saw a fresh streak of soot between the Sun and the flower, connecting them by extending the thickest ray and merging it with one of the petals.

Valjean looked and looked at the smudge. Now more than ever, the drawing reminded him of something. Something so familiar and so obvious that he was clearly a ninny for not seeing it. Something that Javert had gotten after only several minutes, despite being initially baffled.

The fish swam away from the wolf, under the Sun and the flower, above the book and the rifle and the horse...

Nonsense, thought Valjean. No, I shall never get it like this. Come! of what did Javert speak when he was contemplating these drawings?

Of my passage from Orion through the Alps to Paris.

But why was he talking of the escape route from Toulon? Surely Javert and his brother did not leave town tonight…

'So it goes,' Javert had said. And then again: 'So it goes.'

And how does it go? The fish swims. The Sun shines. The wolf howls. The flower grows. So it goes. And Valjean's own hand had inadvertently connected the flower to the Sun.

The Sun…

Valjean felt himself on the verge of discovery – or of madness, perhaps. This must have been how Galileo had felt before realizing, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it was the Earth that moved and not the Sun in the sky, and the Sun was really fixed, like the stars.

Hang on, thought Valjean. Was it the drawing of the Sun or simply of a very big star?

Well, the Sun is a star, he told himself. At least, the astronomers and natural philosophers think so. Descartes had even written about it.

Valjean looked some more at the six thick rays reaching out in every direction, the rightmost one touching the flower.

And just like that, everything fell into place.

"Place d'Etoile!"

No longer did Valjean see the fish, the flower, the wolf, the rifle or the bird. Now he saw the river's flow, the Tuileries gardens, the Surete headquarters on Ile de la Cite, Champs de Mars - and Javert's brother, Moineau*. The sparrow sat in the middle of Champs Elysees, - if the drawing was located correctly, somewhere between Chemin de Versailles and Cours de la Reyne.

And what of the heart with the arrow through it atop which he sat? What did that signify?

Valjean thought back to the few strolls he had dared take with Cosette in the Elysian Fields over the years. What was there besides trees and crowds?

Why, there was only one thing it could be, he thought.

A tavern.

* * *

*Moineau, fr. - literally, "sparrow."


	40. Ch 39

Valjean was not a man given easily to tears. He wept going away to Toulon in his youth; he wept at the realization of his own wickedness after robbing Little Gervais; he wept as he forced himself to face losing Cosette to Marius. But outside of such cataclysmic upsets, there was little that could wring a tear from Valjean's now tranquil, now melancholy, now sullen, but mostly dry eye.

Yet that night, he came close to weeping.

Valjean had caught a cab from the intersection of Rue de Paradis and Rue de Temple, instructing the driver to take him to Place de la Madeleine. Halfway there, he changed the destination to the intersection of Rue de la Madeileine and Rue St. Honore, in a desperate and silly attempt to shave a minute or two from his travel time and get to Javert that much faster.

An extra franc added to the fare bought Valjean those two minutes. However, no amount of money could buy back the interminable eons he then lost on the Cours de la Reine.

Traversing the park northward for the first time, Valjean was ready to break into a run as his eyes searched for a tavern signboard exhibiting a pierced heart.

Traversing it southward on his way back, he walked slower, examining every shadow and bush on suspicions of being a drinking house.

He had arrived back at the place where he first set foot in the park without having found either a signboard or any building. The small, tidy taverns of Cours de la Reine ended well before that part of the map where he began his search. And yet the heart had been situated here – at least so Valjean recalled, and his recollection was all he had now. He could not consult the note again; he left it at the apartment for fear of compromising Javert and himself with it.

Now, starting out to travel along Cours de la Reine for the third time and still seeing nothing but huge shadowed elms and fragrant grass in the light of the gibbous moon, Valjean felt like five kinds of fool. Whatever had given him the idea that the drawings added up to a map? Perhaps if he had been a proper criminal, a pedigreed and guild-approved resident of the underworld, he might've known better what to make of all those secret signs. But he was just an imposter, an unlucky peasant who never learned any secret languages because he never shared his secrets with any brotherhood.

Having failed in his mission to find and protect Javert, Valjean felt drained. He stood now about halfway into the park. Walking it to the end for the third time would have been a waste of time; going back to Javert's apartment would have meant defeat. Bereft of any sensible courses of action, Valjean simply lay down on the grass and closed his eyes.

The breeze was picking up as the night air grew colder, carrying with it a richness of sound of the night park. Elms rustled soothingly in the wind. A bird cooed something in the branches above Valjean's head. Some nameless critter croaked and murmured far away in the grass, its voice barely carrying. Soon, another of its kind joined in. Valjean could not discern what sort of animal made the noises; he imagined, dreamily, a toad and his plumper, brighter-colored lady friend calling out to each other and wondered how come they 'spoke' more in turns than in typical anuran concert.

Valjean was falling into a doze when suddenly he heard the first toad rumble discernibly:

"_Tonnerre."_

Valjean rolled up into a sitting crouch covered in cold sweat. He was still alone. The voices had fallen silent. Had he dreamed them?

Then he heard the oath again, and a few more after it. They were coming straight out of the grass ahead and to the left of where Valjean lay. The earth itself seemed to be disgorging them.

Shuddering, Valjean got up and walked cautiously towards the sound.

"Well, then I don't know…I mean, really!" It was now a woman's voice.

"What, and I should know?" countered the first voice, a man's. "Let the bosses deal with him, they ought to know what's what. That's why they're the big-time _fanandels _– they know things. Babet doesn't pay me to know things; he pays me to cosh people."

"Well, he pays me to cook, and not to keep tally of visitors."

Valjean stopped and looked around again reflexively. The park was deserted. It was as though he were eavesdropping on two arguing _fleurs-de-marie_, if one could imagine flowers talk about cooking and coshing people.

Valjean dropped to the ground to listen closer.

"Leave him to himself. If he's due here, he's here. If he's not due here, he'll get shown the way out soon enough."

Valjean heard steps and what sounded like a door creaking and then being shut.

"Fine! let him sit here," said the woman. "No skin off my nose." The door creaked and was shut again.

Now on his belly, Valjean moved forward in a crawl, feeling the grass and earth before him, until his hand swept ahead and found air.

He was at the edge of a large ditch, which had been hidden from his sight by the gentle sloping of the ground. Across from where he lay, barely daring to breathe, two small out-buildings leaned against the mud of the excavated hill – a henhouse and a firewood-house, as far as he could discern in the darkness. Practically under his chin, there was a vine-covered trellis arcade - from a distance, it had resembled a low boggy patch in the ground. If he raised his head slightly, Valjean could spy the edges of a long wooden table and bench that the arcade covered. Next to it, he saw a stairway cut almost perpendicularly into the loam of the hillside.

And to his right, at the other edge of the ditch, was the tavern itself: a miserable dilapidated shack whose smokeless chimney he had taken twice for an elm stump in the dark.

Valjean had arrived at Coeur Percée, one of the last subterranean drinking houses on Champs Elysees.


	41. Ch 40

Valjean set his forehead flat on the ground and tried to will the cogs in his head to rotate faster.

The man and the woman had plainly been debating Javert's fate, and whether he could be left in place, - Valjean presumed he was sitting under the concealing vines of the trellis, - or whether he had to be forcefully ejected from the ravine. The latter was a task which Valjean, having helped carry Javert's semi-conscious body up some stairs earlier in the day, could readily sympathize with the man for not wanting to undertake. For now, Javert had been left to sit where he sat. This, Valjean decided, was a bad thing. Now the stubborn fool couldn't be stopped from ambushing the rest of Patron-Minette with his bare fists and getting his throat cut. Oh, he probably has a plan – when does he ever not have a plan? But what good is an unarmed plan against a planless but sharp _dague_?

And even if, Valjean suddenly thought, he does have a plan, even a good plan, what if another fit overtakes him? What if he can't bring anything into operation because he's too busy stumbling around like a somnambula, looking for an inkwell and paper to do his German lines?

"…say much. He just kept asking for Laurent."

The sudden creaking and reemergence of the woman and her companion from the tavern sent Valjean face down into the mud before he could finish the thought.

"The man is pie-eyed. He smells like he's spent a week inside a pub," continued the woman. "I still can't fathom how he got down here without falling down the stairs and breaking all his bones." The harangue ended with an incongruous motherly cluck.

"Who is Laurent?"

"The old landlord. Babet's brother-in-law, I think. The tavern went to Babet to cover a gambling debt. He only brought me here two weeks ago for the first time. I had asked: what about my pots? And he laughed and said: yes, take them - the cellar is stocked to feed a lot of hungry customers."

"Then this specimen must not have heard of this transaction yet," said the man. "No Laurent to be found here anymore."

They were both standing under the trellis now, hidden from Valjean's sight. Valjean cursed himself for lacking the forethought to shift into a better observing position while they were both indoors.

"_Tiens_! look at this, then!" said the man. "What do you think?"

There was a pause.

"He did say he just came back from the country," said the woman, fresh doubt in her voice. "D'you think he meant our kind of _country_? That's plainly too rich a trinket for his outfit. He must've lifted it off someone."

"And probably some other things besides, which is how come he came to be so drunk." The man sounded pleased with his own reasoning. "Hocked some loot to a fence and did some celebrating. There! See? See the writing on the lid?"

"I can't read that."

"Nor I. It's not in French. And this fellow speaks French all right - better French than my cousins back in Auvergne, especially after they've tied on a few. I placed his accent right away - he's plainly from Provence, I've heard enough of that accent from guards in Toulon. And this is inscribed in German or Dutch. So he must've got it from a foreigner. This fellow is no _dab_."

Valjean heard a faint clink, as though the man were delicately trying to ring some sort of metal for purity.

"A solid little piece of white!" said the man with envy. "I don't think I've ever seen such a pretty snuff box as this. Just look at this fancy filigree work! I've got half a mind to keep it for myself."

"I'd leave it in his pocket where you found it, Barre-Carosse," counseled the woman. "If he's a fanandel, it's not good manners to _rinse out_ one's own."

"Wise enough," said the man. "No use shitting where you eat."

"Better help him inside," said the woman. "He looks like death warmed over already, and it's fixing to rain. I'll get a fire going."

"Right then. Take his left arm. H-hhup!"

Valjean watched the two of them maneuver Javert's tall lanky body into the tavern. The door closed behind them.

Well, thought Valjean, he got where he wanted to be. Now he'll wait for Patron-Minette to show up. Not all of them, presumably – he did say there were over a hundred of them in all. But some are coming. Presumably, his younger brother among them. Or is this man his brother?

Valjean tried to imagine what Javert's brother might look like. From the recesses of his memory, a vision floated to the top: Javert, in his old uniform of the _adjutant-guarde-chiourme_, young, brisk and dark from the southern sun, sitting on the ledge of a wall niche at the entrance to the barracks in Toulon. He was leaning against the iron bars with his head tossed back and laughed in full voice at the antics of an effeminate old galley-slave in the red waistcoat and the green cap of a lifer, who was offering his leg-irons to the roundsman for inspection, like Cinderella presenting her dainty foot to the Prince. The convict was holding up the hem of an imaginary gown in one hand and fanning himself with the other, as if in near-swoon. The rest of his chain-gang laughed, and Javert – back then still _Javertis_, nicknamed for his habit of preemptively appending "I'm warning you" to every order he gave – laughed, too. The sergeants did not laugh. One of them gave the old comedian a robust shove in the ribs with his cudgel. Taken by surprise, the old man fell over, taking two other fellows chained to him down as well. Javert had hopped off the ledge then, walked up to the sergeant, and dragged him to the side by the sleeve, saying, "Away, away! – trip one, trip another, the rest can't come through, and we're here half a day. Don't waste time."

Valjean looked up and ahead into the starless sky, feeling the first small raindrops on his face. He thought suddenly of his own brother. The last time he had thought of him was when he saw him in the dream almost ten years ago, the night before denouncing himself at the assizes at Arras. Valjean had not seen him since childhood; after attaining maturity, Jacques Valjean left the village to find work elsewhere and never returned. Whatever had become of him? wondered Valjean. And what of my sister? And her little one, the one she still had with her in Paris thirty years ago? And what of the rest of them? They are all grown men and women now, if they lived. Where could they be?

Valjean became angry at himself. Half a score relatives, all lost and forgotten through the years like so many handkerchiefs, and not even sought after. And here was Javert, dragging himself out of sickbed to die by the side of his little brother, - for without backup, against a whole armed gang, it was sure death for them both.

Well! Three can stand firmer than two, decided Valjean and rose to take the stairs down into the ditch.


	42. Ch 41

"Halt! _Qui vive_?" sounded the man's voice behind him.

Valjean, who had been descending the staircase backwards to avoid slipping into the mud, jumped to the ground from halfway and landed on both feet with a slight "hupp," like an acrobat performing a simple but visually impressive _truc_.

"A fellow of one's own kind, Barre-Carosse," he said, massaging his thighs without turning to face the ruffian. "The devil! How slippery these stairs are in the rain!"

"That they are," said Barre-Carosse. Valjean turned around and beheld a slight fellow a bit shorter than himself, in a worker's cap, a worn clerk's waistcoat and canvas trousers with holes at the knees. His shoes were very poor and tied together with twine. Round, thick spectacles sat on his nose. If he had met Barre-Carosse in the street, Valjean would not have thought that this man had ever "coshed" anyone bigger than a house fly.

"Who are you then, comrade?" asked Barre-Carosse.

Instead of answering, Valjean craned his neck to look beyond the man's back.

"That's odd," he said, as if to himself. "Gone! disappeared! fallen through the very ground!"

"You mean the fellow that came through earlier?" asked Barre-Carosse.

"Depends on the fellow in question," said Valjean. "What did he look like?"

"Very tall, bony, yellow hair."

"Soused to the gills?"

"Oh, quite!"

"That's the type. We were supposed to come together, but he got it in his head to run off ahead of me. I lost him in the dark and spent a quarter hour wandering between the trees like an idiot in a maze hedge. He was supposed to lead me here, you know, and instead I had to find the place on my own! Why, I almost fell in!"

"I as well!" laughed Barre-Carosse. "I'd thought the tavern would be where all the others are…"

"…Well, sure! How was one supposed to know it was a subterranean?" continued Valjean in the same aggrieved tone. "I haven't been in a subterranean in a decade. I'd forgotten this shack was even here!"

"Sure! sure, sure. But what one doesn't see can't be found, right? Baberet is a clever man."

Valjean squinted, taking care to exaggerate the grimace enough for Barre-Carosse to read it in the dim light of the reflector globe in the tavern's front window.

"What did you call the man?" he said, loading his voice with suspicion.

"Baberet, of course," said Barre-Carosse evenly. "What's the matter?"

Valjean said nothing but squinted further and stepped forward, close enough to look Barre-Carosse deep in the small yet somehow guileless-looking eyes.

"Art thou the _mouton_?" He grasped Barre-Carosse's sleeve. "'Baberet'! what! what! The _cognes_ taught thee poorly!"

Barre-Carosse shook his head and put a friendly hand on Valjean's shoulder.

"Peace!" he said. "It was a trial. Babet, of course."

"Trial!" exclaimed Valjean, as if in anger. "Don't talk to me of trials! Lately, I see the _raille_ everywhere! Don't play on my frayed nerves!"

"They will find him out, the _mouton._" Barre-Carosse bared a mouthful of rotten teeth. "I hear they're close."

"'Close' don't stock the larder," growled Valjean. "Things are not good, you know! There is no business. I want assignments – I have a child to feed!" He stepped back and waved his hand, as if swatting at an annoying midge. "But it's not your fault, of course. It's the damned _raille. _I've got nerves and no business to conduct, and now I have the _raille _behind me again! Always there! Always near-by, always on one's tail! Some days, one wants to lie down and die, be flat done with it all, but one may not. Even out of the galleys, slavery!"

The genuine hurt suffusing Valjean's tirade must have impressed Barre-Carrosse, because he stepped aside and made way for Valjean, opening for him the door into the tavern.

The tavern, barely lit up by two smoking wall-mounted candlesticks, the window reflector globe and the kitchen stove fire, was much larger on the inside than it looked on the outside – a large part of it had been dug out of the hill itself. On one side of it, there was a bar and a billiards table, both in disrepair: the wood of the bar was worm-eaten and the green baize of the billiards table torn near one of the corners. There were no glasses or tin measures in evidence at the bar, nor any balls or cues anywhere by the billiards table. On the other side, half lost in the shadows, there were several small tables with garden chairs of wicker, with remnants of paint still noticeable on both, though one could not guess at the color.

By the kitchen stove, the woman bustled with a pot of something that smelled surprisingly good; beef stew with carrots, Valjean's nose told him.

"'Line!" exclaimed Barre-Carosse. "Ey, Pauline! We've got another guest!"

"Already?" asked the woman. Valjean quitted his cap. "Who might you be, then?" she said, looking up briefly from stirring the stew.

"Jean-the-jack," said Valjean.

"Never heard of you."

"That is good. I like not being heard of."

"Are you here to confer with the rest?" she asked.

"I'm here to do whatever gets asked of me," said Valjean seriously. She raised her eyes to him, then nodded and went back to stirring, apparently satisfied.

"Come, let's have a tipple before supper," offered Barre-Carosse, stumbling in the dark and catching hold of Valjean to right himself.

An opened bottle of wine stood at the ready on one of the tables.

As they took their seats, Valjean took note of someone lying on the long bench along the opposite wall, so deep in the shadows that he was almost invisible. It was a very large man, his arms crossed on his chest. He appeared to be in deep sleep.

It was not Javert.

"Last sealed bottle up here," said Barre-Carosse.

Two small, unwashed glasses were brought to them by the woman from behind the bar, and a toast was made to the success of the evening's endeavor.

Valjean drank without pleasure.

"What of my friend?" he asked, looking around. "Did he leave already?"

"He's down in the cellar, looking for more bottles." Barre-Carosse nodded towards a heavy wooden door half-open in the corner behind them. "Said he didn't want to drink from the draught. You may go look for him if you want."

Valjean got up and went to the door, lowering his head and peering into the darkness. He saw several stone stairs lead down into what looked like a wine cellar, except inappropriately large for a tavern of that size and poverty. How far down the stairs went, he could not discern in the darkness.

"Got a spare boogie?" he asked his host.

"No need," said Barre-Carosse, who had come up behind him. "There's a rail to grip. And there ought to be light down there already – your friend took a candle down with him. What, has it gone out?"

"Apparently," said Valjean. There was no light to be seen in the cellar. It was as though he were looking into a bottomless black abyss.

"Impossible!" exclaimed Barre-Carosse. "Look closer!"

And with all his might, he shoved Valjean down the stairs and slammed the door shut above his head.


	43. Ch 42

Ordinarily, an attack like that might have wobbled Valjean, perhaps even made him take a step forward, but no more than that: his bulk would have kept him steady enough on his feet to recover within a second. However, ordinarily, he did not have to contend with stone stairs worn smooth by decades of use and made slippery with mud and rainwater.

Barre-Carosse's shove sent him flying forward.

In a desperate effort not to count every step with his skull, Valjean attempted to fall onto his hands and ended up tumbling forward over his head several times down the entire length of the stairs. Several long seconds later, he lay on the dirty paving stones of the cellar floor on his back and panted. The fall knocked the wind out of him, but otherwise, he felt miraculously unhurt.

As he lay there in the dark, Valjean heard a peculiar sound – a soft noise akin to thumping coming from the cellar corner to the left from the doorway. Valjean gained his knees and stood up. All around him, there was nothing but darkness, and yet Valjean couldn't help but think back to his adventure through the sewer: all things being known in comparison, the cellar was not one tenth so horrible a place. Valjean felt around himself. The floor was of cold stone, moist and dirty, littered here and there with a few stems of straw. As he moved forward, Valjean felt the edge of the first stair.

"Javert?"

"Still here."

Trailing his right hand on the side of the stairs, Valjean stood up. The split-second of meager light that had fallen into the cellar before the door was slammed shut had allowed him a view of several large crates stacked against the side of the stairway. It was towards the image-memory of those crates that Valjean now hobbled, one hand on the stairs and the other carefully feeling the air ahead.

The soft thumping – or was it slapping? - noise continued, getting marginally louder as Valjean progressed. Within a few steps, his feet found an obstacle. Reaching down, he discovered someone's ankles. It didn't take him long to guess who they belonged to.

"Bravo," drawled Javert's voice from several feet to the right. "Bravo and _bis_! Encore!"

"Are you all right?" asked Valjean. "What's that noise?"

The sound picked up tempo. "Me, doing my utmost to applaud you. Beg your pardon that my efforts are somewhat constrained."

Mindful of Javert's legs, Valjean made his way cautiously between the crates. Javert lay stretched out against the wall with his head in the corner and his feet almost touching the stairs. There was loose straw under him. Valjean found some room on the floor near his shoulders and knelt there, put his right hand on Javert's chest. His fingers curled around thick ropes.

"They tied you up," said Valjean, feeling dull rage rise in him. "Are you hurt?"

"Not a bit," said Javert smugly. "Unlike you, I had the sense to come down here on my two feet instead of tumbling arse over tit down the stairs like a street clown."

Ignoring the insult, Valjean felt along Javert's body. There were ropes binding his hands before him, - he had been clapping with only the tips of his fingers - and also ropes binding both the hands together to his torso.

"Did they tie up your legs as well?"

"They did indeed," said Javert with perverse satisfaction. "They were most thorough. Or him, rather. Guelemer. A very thorough gent when he has a mind to be."

"You sound like this was your plan all along: to be bound and tossed into a wine cellar like a sack of potatoes."

"Far from it. I never had any intentions of being tossed anyplace. I descended here of my own volition."

"What in God's name for?"

Instead of an answer, Javert wriggled his body into a sitting position against one of the crates.

"Let us think about something far more interesting and pertinent," he said. "I gave you a direct order to stay put. You disobeyed. And so here you now are, when it's there you should be. How come?"

"I told you: I couldn't let you go to your death alone."

"So you decided to join me in death, then? And they say chivalry is dead." Javert sighed melodramatically. Then, without a word or sound of warning, he fell over sideways into Valjean's lap.

"Are you all right?" asked Valjean, carefully guiding Javert's head into his lap with both hands. Javert, he noticed, fairly reeked of some kind of cheap liquor.

A tiny sliver of light now percolated into the cellar from underneath the massive wooden door that imprisoned them. It must have been this meager illumination that now allowed Valjean the sight of Javert's wide gray eyes glimmering up at him. Then again, Valjean felt he could not discredit the possibility that Javert's eyes simply phosphoresced in the dark, like the eyes of a night-bird or a cat.

"I think the better question to ask right now would be whether you and not me are all right. You went down pretty hard, and on your hands."

"Everything seems to be intact. It was a lucky fall."

"Thank God for small mercies. What did you expect to accomplish by coming here?"

"I could ask you the same," pointed out Valjean. "You ended up in the same place I did, except bound hand and foot with cattle-rope."

"So? what of it?"

"So, how do you hope to help your brother in this state?"

"Don't presume to know what I hope to do, or how precisely I hope to do it." Javert huffed, sending a small but potently noxious exhalation towards Valjean's nose.

"And you are drunk," admonished Valjean.

"Not a bit." Javert huffed again. "All right, perhaps a bit. Most of it I never swallowed - it was for the smell. Good to know I am fooling people with it."

"Even if they think you incapacitated with drink rather than simply tipsy, how do you hope to fight them all?"

"It's all immaterial now," said Javert. "I planned on being alone, and now I am not. Change of plans, then. Since you are here, I might as well make use of you."

"As a pillow?" Valjean flexed his stomach muscles under Javert's head.

"That also." Javert leaned farther back onto Valjean and set his feet on top of a crate, like a lounging stevedore. "You are abnormally well suited for it. Not too hard, not too soft. I feel like Goldilocks."

Valjean snorted. "You bloody well look like Goldilocks, in this wig of yours."

Javert exhaled a hum through his nostrils.

"We will be here a while," he said. "An hour, maybe more. Two hours. More is not out of the question, but I doubt it. Until then, we are free to think of other things."

"Like how to free you."

"That I wouldn't worry about just yet," said Javert cryptically.

"Then how do you suggest we pass the time?" asked Valjean without thinking and felt his face heat up immediately. 'At least in this hole he won't be able to see me blush,' he thought. Speaking with Javert, he discovered, was not dissimilar to speaking with some of his old chain-gang pals from Toulon, except Javert's lewdness was more playful than obscene and his profanity, when it came, more heartfelt.

But Javert surprised him again.

"We shall play petanca," he declared. "I call the first bowl."


	44. Ch 43

This time, Valjean remained silent and patiently awaited explanation.

"Well? How about it? A game of bowls would very much hit the spot right now."

"Not sure what you mean by that, but I'm all for it," said Valjean placidly.

"You don't understand, yet you agree right away?" Javert sounded amused. "This is how some men get dragged into criminal acts, you know - through mindless acquiescence to their pals."

"I don't believe you mean anything criminal," said Valjean. "I trust you."

The simple words seemed to sap Javert's desire to tease him further.

"Perhaps you shouldn't," he said softly. "I'm not the man you think you know."

"Not the man I once thought I knew, perhaps."

But come, is this really true? asked himself Valjean. Certainly in Montreil-sur-Mer, Inspector Javert had been very different. Not entirely different, perhaps, but certainly far more bitter and unpleasant. There was no playfulness to his sarcasm then; he was little more than a dyspeptic functionary of the state with occasional flashes of genuine nastiness. But during the altercation in the Gorbeau hovel last winter, was the Javert he had observed, who joked and bantered with the men he was arresting, so different from the man that lay helpless in his lap now? Not very much. So who was Javert then, really? the man who screamed and stomped his feet at Fantine as she lay dying, or the man who stood surrounded by seven armed bandits and calmly negotiated with them peaceful surrender and release of their hostage?

And are you the man who robbed little Gervais of his hard-earned forty sous, or the man who sat up all night with Cosette when she had scarlet fever? suddenly asked a voice in his head.

I was one, but am now the other, answered Valjean.

Accord him at least the same consideration, then, continued the voice. Or do you think what he did to Fantine was that much worse than what you did to Gervais? Fantine had minutes more to live, hours at most. He may have robbed her of those last scraps of miserable time, but what of it? Would she have been happier had she lived through them? Her daughter would not have been by her side when she died either way. But you! you have robbed a little boy of his two days' salary. And you know well what can happen when someone wants money and doesn't have it. What if that money had been intended to buy bread or medicines? Or pay down an overdue debt and keep his father from prison? You might have ruined his entire life with that robbery – a whole family's! Or what if your act by example turned the boy against honest labor altogether and towards robbery? Who art thou to sit in judgment of a policeman whom you once saw get cross with an unhappy prostitute?

"You've gone very quiet," said Javert.

"I was enumerating things I know about you. They don't add up to much."

"Shall I leave you to it then?"

"Not unless you wish to."

"Shall we play then?"

Valjean felt himself smile. "Well, go on! You called the first turn, I believe."

"Don't you want to know first where the jack is?"

"Where is the jack?"

"The jack is in the middle of an understanding."

Javert's new game was beginning to sound like an augury under pretense of a game.

"An understanding?" Valjean asked warily.

"Exactly. Right in the heart of it."

"And we are playing at getting as close to it as possible without rolling over it?"

"Right. That is petanca, no? You have played petanca before?"

"The real petanca or this game?"

"The real one."

"Is that your first bowl then?" asked Valjean shrewdly.

"Just assessing my distances," smirked Javert.

"I have not played it, no. Never had the time. And once I had the time, I found I had no friendly acquaintances to play with. Yourself?"

"Less often than I would've liked, but occasionally, in my youth in Provence, yes. And a few times since."

"How many _boules _do we each get?"

"Three each. That ought to see us through the bulk of the waiting for all the actors to assemble in position and raise the curtains. And also, three is a very appealing number."

Valjean felt rather than saw the man stretch. "Although if we have the time, we can go for four. On this point, I am not a dogmatic."

"All right."

"First bowl, then."

"Go."

Javert was silent for a moment.

"The girl who lives with you. Fantine's daughter. I know you bought her from the peasants to whom she gave her. That is why Jondrette had come after you last winter - to shake you down for more money. So here's what I've been wondering this whole time: are you in fact her father?"

Valjean laughed wistfully. "No, no. I am only her guardian. She calls me 'father' but I am not."

"Hm."

"Well?"

"A mystery, then. Consider the bowl an overshot. Your turn."

"What is a mystery? Her parentage?"

"No, no… Well, yes, but that's not the main mystery. Never mind. Your turn."

"What's the main mystery?"

"That will have to be my second bowl," said Javert.

"I allow you a do-over."

"Rules are rules. Take your turn."

"I demand from you a do-over."

Javert barked out a laugh.

"How unsurprising. As always, old Jean Valjean is not one for rules."

Suddenly, Javert swung his feet onto the floor, rolled deftly on his stomach, and leaned on his elbows, piercing Valjean with his glowing eyes.

"Even the rules of a simple game," he continued with new fierceness. "_Nom d'un chien_, even when absolutely nothing is at stake!"

Valjean held his gaze. Finally, Javert broke their eye contact, lowered his chin into the cup of his tied-up palms and fixed his stare on a tuft of straw in front of him.

"My point was not overshot, it seems, but undershot," he said with sad irony, speaking at the straw. "I may yet _do the bec_ and maneuver it into a winning position."

For all of Javert's talk about bad shots, Valjean felt like he had just been severely outplayed. The worst of it was that he could not understand how precisely he had lost, but only that he lost.

It was naked instinct to retaliate hurt for hurt that pushed the question up to his tongue.

"My bowl, then. Who was Isaac to you, in truth?"


	45. Ch 44

He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, but the deed was done. Without moving a muscle on his face, Javert hid his head in his hands – between the fingers, since his palms were bound together – and lowered himself onto straw, as though prostrating himself in prayer. His shoulders began quivering.

A surge of self-hatred washed over Valjean.

"Javert, forgive me," he pleaded. "I don't know what came over me - some monstrous impulse - I can't account for it! My dear friend, I beg your pardon."

The man did not look up, even at being called 'dear friend.' Valjean dared to put a hand on his shoulder. Javert did not seem to notice it.

'What a miserable old fool I am!' thought Valjean, kneading gently the tense shoulder under his hand.

Javert stilled under his ministrations. Then, all of a sudden, he rolled over onto his back and grasped Valjean's hand with both his tied ones, like a playful cat.

"You crossed the line," he said.

Valjean understood that what he mistook for weeping was in fact a paroxysm of Javert's peculiar soundless laughter. At first Javert's lack of distress relieved him, and he let his hand be pressed. Then he felt foolish and tried to withdraw it.

But Javert held on tightly.

"Why do you wish to know about Isaac?"

There was no hitch in his voice, no change of inflection. No sign that just hours ago, that name came to his lips only in the throes of epileptic delirium.

"I wish to know nothing that you do not wish to disclose," said Valjean firmly. "I have no desire to pry into your private vices."

Javert's mouth grew tight. "_Pardieu_! This is why you crossed the line," he hissed, squeezing Valjean's hand now almost painfully. "You ask with foreknowledge of the answer, and you ask only so that you may pass judgment and condemn. Well, you may not! I do not allow it!"

"I understand," said Valjean. To his growing discomfort, he was indeed beginning to understand.

"You understand nothing," said Javert coldly and pushed Valjean's hand away. "Bowl again."

"No penalty?"

"The over-step was accidental. A stumble. The _boule _has been re-collected and you have it in your hands once more. Step back, put your feet together and bowl again."

"You said you have been working for Vidocq this whole time. How come he did not know that you were at the barricade on Rue de Chanverie during the insurrection, if you were there as a police agent and not a rebel?"

Even in the dark, Valjean could see Javert's eyes grow wider at this.

"Do you mean to say he knows now?"

"He knows."

"From you?"

"From me. He asked about the day you found me in the sewers."

"And you recounted everything?"

"Since the moment I saw you tied to the post in the wine-house."

Javert stuffed the ropes into his mouth and groaned around them, like a soldier undergoing an amputation.

"I'm sorry," said Valjean. "I seem to have committed another fault."

Javert gnawed at the ropes some more, like a dog, then released them.

"The fault is mine. I did not instruct you correctly. Oh, what a botch! I will never hear the end of this now. I had asked Gisquet to keep the assignment from him – I did not expect to…"

Javert fell suddenly silent.

"But why were you keeping it secret at all?"

Javert clicked his tongue in irritation.

"I am starting to wonder if the tremendous cleverness I have always attributed to you wasn't simply a tremendous run of luck."

"What?"

"Do you mean to say you still understand nothing?"

"I've been hearing nothing but riddles from both you and Vidocq all night!" exclaimed Valjean, exasperated. "You are right - I really am not very clever, or at all clever even. I'm just an old peasant who is good with his hands. But it also seems to me now your life is much like mine, a theatre performance where more effort goes into operating machines backstage than into acting the piece itself."

"All police agents live outside the pale of society. The very words "police" and "agent" make regular folks spit. Secrets are our _modus operandi_. This surprises you?"

"I always took you for an open and honest man." This sounded so much like an insult that Valjean instantly corrected himself: "I mean, a plain and uncomplicated sort of honest man, who conceals nothing about himself, even in minor matters."

"And I mostly do not, outside of what is necessary to complete this or that police task. Especially in minor matters. But just because I don't hide things doesn't mean people see them."

Javert turned onto his back again and began speaking, looking up into the vault of the cellar.

"You bowled well. I shall tell you. Not everything, but enough. Enough even to answer both your questions – about Isaac and about why I did not tell Vidocq about my task on the barricade. He that has ears, let him hear. Have you ears?"

"In good working order."

"And what of the brain behind them?"

"It'll catch up."

"Jolly good. This will be something of a modern-day Hellenic myth, with elements of Homer and Pindar. Settle in comfortably."


	46. Ch 45, part one

Author's Note: I know I'm updating much more often these days, and some of you are waiting until the fic is done to review. I actually still have a long ways to go with it. The end is not yet on the horizon. But I would still love to know your thoughts and opinions as you read the new chapters.

Special thanks to Yamx and Chloe625 for their unfailing attentions!

* * *

"Do you recall the blond who led the men on our barricade, the handsome young fellow with 'over-my-dead-body' airs of Leonidas leading the Spartans?"

Valjean did and said so.

"For the past four or five years, he had been the leader of a certain club of young idlers and students. They numbered under twenty, to remain officially in the white; however, they made sure to communicate well with other such clubs. They gathered regularly and talked a lot of fancy nonsense to each other. Before 1830, they dreamed of leading a Revolution; after 1830, they dreamed of leading another Revolution, the one effected having evidently fallen into heresy. A distressing habit with Revolutions, one finds."

"In truth, they were more harmless than they considered themselves. They tended to keep their attentions on their own kind - the students, the idle young men without profession. The unambitious sons of the bourgeois, in short. Those fellows were always a headache for us in the municipal police, because they started a lot of brawls. But they were never really of much concern to the political police, because there were not very many of them, and they kept mostly to themselves. The Polytechnic chaps like to think they make revolutions, but they don't - they just bob to the surface when the waves of popular discontent crest. And so the real dangers were judged to reside with those men who were permanently installed in the workers' fabourgs. This was borne out on Rue de Chanvrerie: the workers of Paris never worked up the appropriate ardor, and the only ones left to face the National Guard were a few students and a bunch of construction workers led into the mousetrap by a flare-up of passions. Incidentally, Rue de Chanvrerie was far from the only hotspot in the city. While the Republicans were playing "redskins-settlers" with the National Guard, a horde of ruffians was playing "wolves-sheep" with Vidocq and his men on Ile de la Cité. Keep this in mind."

"The boy's name was...well, it is irrelevant now. You know it yourself, probably, or you can read it in the papers if you wish. Let us call him Achilles. That was his code-name with the political spies. He was very well-known to them – one means, to the political police. I would even say, intimately known. Political police is a big expensive machine employing a great deal of small cheap cogs. It is as poor in brains as it is rich in eyes. At one point, there were no fewer than three paid agents shadowing our Achilles at once."

"Two of them are irrelevant to the story - they were holdovers from Delavau, one a Jesuit tool and the other a first-class scoundrel. Both of them born _provocateurs, _useless for real work and good only at scribbling denunciations. It is the third man who is of interest to us. We shall call him Patroclus."

"The main distinction," continued Javert, "between him and the other two agents was that he was good at what he did. He managed to actually join the society our Achilles presided over. Or at very least, ingratiate himself enough not to be set out the door the minute they got to talking about guns, ammunition, distribution lists, and other such interesting things. He overheard their codes; he had knowledge of price-lists and suppliers; once or twice he was able to pass along the locations of two pawn-shops that doubled as warehouses for rifles, lead, and bullet-molds. He was certainly no _mouchard. _A spy informs on suspicion, out of malice or for money, without proof that can stand up to impartial examination – like I did with you in Montreil-sur-Mer, for all that I was right. It is a contemptible, vile, maleficent and utterly useless variety of spy. A good agent does not inform until he is certain that he has both uncovered the truth and can prove the case to a magistrate."

"I am usually wary of spies who sink that far into the mire they are there to help drain, but there are differences within the species. Patroclus was a superb agent. No one suspected him in the least. And at the same time, he managed to do nothing at all illegal while in their company. If Achilles gave him this or that minor assignment, Patroclus never completed it. His obligation to the law would not allow him to become an active accomplice. But he concealed these small betrayals so well that Achilles came to think of him simply as irresponsible and frivolous. He was still considered harmless enough not to be excluded from the group's meetings."

"Patroclus' task was a difficult one. He had no specific truth to uncover. He was recruited in 1830 after the Revolution to take part in the overarching police mission to prevent another armed revolt. The particulars were to be figured out on the way. Sometimes they were; often they were not. It did not help that the political police, the Security Brigade, the municipal police and the soldier guard all executed this mission without interacting, like planets orbiting a single Sun. Patroclus had been initially assigned to the political police. It was by then-Prefect Treilhard, if you'll credit it. Ah, you probably don't know – Treilhard's Christian name was Achille."

"Vidocq spotted my Patroclus in the ranks of the politicals early. He reckoned him for a crafty up-and-comer and offered him a spot on the Brigade at higher wages. The fellow transferred gladly – his cover demanded an air of profligacy, and he had an orphaned cousin to support, a feeble-minded girl who required a live-in nurse. His task remained the same. Vidocq sensed that developments were brewing in the political realm that he ought to be on top of. Patroclus and I thus made acquaintance through Vidocq."

"The fellow was tremendous at _savate_ and stick-fencing. We began to meet regularly in Casseux's _salle_ to spar. This went on for two years altogether. He and Casseux argued constantly about style and techniques - Casseux insisted on _parades_, Patroclus insisted on dodging, that sort of thing. At the same time, Patroclus was losing his health to his assignment, which necessitated more time spent around wine than his willpower could handle. By the end of those two years, he had deteriorated from a gymnast into a stumbling drunk. Pissed-up* eventually proclaimed him a lost cause and kicked him out of the _salle_. Lecour was just opening his own establishment, but he would not take him in either. Without his hobby, Patroclus lost his bearings completely. A point came when he ceased to report for duty. Vidocq sent me out to find him, because I knew all his favorite haunts. I found him blind drunk in a dance-hall at Barriere du Combat and took him over to my place."

Behind the cellar door, something made of glass shattered, and the sliver of light under the door dimmed. Both men looked at the door, half expecting it to open. It did not.

Javert, who had by then assumed once again a sitting position against a crate, pursed his mouth to the side comically. His hands, which he had been moving subtly side to side to ease circulation, stilled in front of his chest.

"Someone broke the lamp in the window," he said. "This is heartening."

"Why?"

"Whoever broke it is probably quite drunk. That would make things easier. Now, where was I?"

* * *

* - Michel Casseux, also known as _le Pisseux_ (1794–1869), opened the first establishment in 1825 for practicing and promoting savate, the French martial art of kick-boxing.


	47. Ch 45, part two

"You just found Patroclus," said Valjean, who was becoming engrossed in the story.

Keeping an eye on the door, Javert continued.

"That's right, I did. We rode back to my place. In the fiacre, he came apart at the seams. He was crying out, thrashing, mumbling nonsense - I don't think he even recognized me. I put him to sleep on a camp-bed. He slept like a stone for ten hours and woke up almost sober. I fed him some bread with cheese and demanded he tell me what has been happening to him. He refused. I was firm. Again, he refused. I threatened to have Vidocq turn him out. Finally, he relented. It was a banal story. He was in love, and he was unrequited. I advised him to speak with Vidocq, as he was ever the resident expert of matters of the feminine heart. At this, Patroclus suddenly began weeping."

"This startled me – I'd never seen him weep before. Between the sobs, he managed to put across that this was a love so unsuitable, so impossible, and so unsettling that he could not speak to anyone about it – not Vidocq, not a relative, not a confessor, no one. This was becoming curious. I offered myself as a confidante. He wouldn't have it. I pressed him to talk. I insisted that there was little he could tell me that I would find impossible or unsettling. That in my years as a chain-gang guard in Toulon, a _grognard_ in Russia, and a Surete agent and inspector in Paris, I'd seen things that he couldn't conjure up in any absinthe-induced nightmare. And that I may have limited personal knowledge of women, but I've seen love fell other fellows often enough to know what's what."

"Eventually, I pulled the truth out of him. It would have been easier to pull out a wisdom tooth. Things were not as banal as I first thought. It turned out his unrequited love was the pretty blond leader of their club! To make a bad thing worse, he had never suspected such inclinations in himself before, and he was not taking it well. And to make a worse thing altogether unbearable, he now had a stark conflict of interest. He could no longer in good conscience continue writing reports on the man, yet he needed the money he earned by those reports to support himself and his family. Bad business all around."

"By that time, we all knew for certain that when the trouble started, this club of theirs would be on the frontline. Patroclus knew it, and Vidocq knew it, and Gisquet knew it, and I certainly knew it. They were on every list. It was a matter of time. Cholera was raging. It was perfectly clear that there will be if not a revolution, then at least an uprising, and if not that, then at least an armed skirmish or two. The cholera panic demanded blood. There was nothing conceivable that Patroclus could do to stop this. And now he wanted my advice."

"What did you tell him?" asked Valjean.

Javert raised his eyebrows and sighed.

"That I had no good news to impart. That he knew better than anyone that there was not enough real revolutionary ardor in the workers and not enough weapons for them in the armories. That despite all the efforts of the Republican agitators, the majority of Parisians were not so gullible as to believe the police were poisoning the public wells with cholera, and they would not take up arms against them on that account. That the Republicans had no chance of taking the city without army sympathies, and they had practically none - a few fooldhardy fellows in the artillery, but that would hardly help. That at least three squadrons of carabineers have already been guaranteed in support to the National Guard on the day things get hot. That the whole thing was going to be a botched mess. I reminded him that even if his _bel ami_ were arrested now instead of being left for the National Guard to skewer, he'd be _mowed down_ for treason. Possibly – possibly! – if the monarch was in a good enough humor to extend a commutation! – there might be a glimmer of a chance of a life sentence at the galleys. In Achilles' case, this would simply mean a slow ignominious death rather than a fast one. He would not be brought to a sanatorium like Toulon, where a lifer can eat his beans in relative peace for twenty, thirty, forty years. Most likely, he would end up in Rochefort. I had observed our Achilles at close range before. The boy was a tea-rose. In the Rochefort swamps, he'd wither in six months."

"I told Patroclus all this and then gave him the only advice I could. If he was really as much in love as he claimed, he ought to arrange for a family pension with Gisquet, withdraw from all planning of the revolt, obtain a transfer to another assignment, and finally, when the time came, go with his beloved wherever he directed and perish with him."

Valjean's felt his heart contract painfully.

"He laughed at first," said Javert. "An unhappy little laugh. He told me that I was just a _cogne_; that he should've known better than to be fooled by our friendly relations; that his kind – he was already speaking of _his kind_, now! – that his kind and the police are natural enemies; and that the reason why I'm telling him to do all that is because I simply want one less _like him_ in the world, and that I would probably put them all to death myself had I the authority."

"I began laughing then, too. It was all too absurd to be believed. I told him then that I was not speaking with him from authority but from experience. If he was not mistaking infatuation for love, then it would better for him not to survive his beloved. That was my verdict. He pointed out that my claim to experience was silly, as I was still alive, in good health, and he had even once seen me smile. I told him that sometimes, we have no choice but to remain alive, because others would have it so, and they have holds over us. But he was not like me. He was free to act – as long as he arranged for his family to be provided for, which I could help him do."

"'In fact,' said I, 'if we use this chance wisely, we might contrive to dispatch two birds with one stone. I could speak to Gisquet about the both of us and arrange our pensions myself. I have more sway with him than you; he is obligated to me for some things. I need six hundred francs in cash to cover a debt I owe. It is far less than what I'm due from the state, but it will suffice to square me with my creditor. You have done well over the past two years. I could secure for your cousin thirty or forty francs a month from the Prefecture, to continue for five years; Vidocq can supplement this with something from his own coffers. He does not refuse cases like yours. Then when the Republicans make their move, both of us can march out with Achilles to win our freedom.'

He goggled at me.

'Are you a Republican?' he asked.

'Don't talk nonsense,' I answered.'

'Freedom from what, then, if not tyranny?'

'From unhappiness,' I said.

'I understand myself, but what have you got to be unhappy about?'

So I decided: to hell with it, I shall tell him.

'Say, big R - big P, rather - how long have you been in love with your _bousingot_?'

'I don't know. Looking back on it, a very long time. Two years, at least. I just didn't know it.'

'Well, some part of you must've known - you've been drowning your sorrows in wine ever since.'

'As you can see.'

'So you expect you will be beside yourself with grief when he dies?' I asked. 'Despite never having got so much as a glance in your direction from him, to say nothing of more interesting things?'

He flushed. Just went beet-red all over. It was an odd sight to see. He wore his mask of the cynic too well sometimes.

'Now imagine this little fairy tale for me," said I. 'Imagine that he did, in fact, love you back. That the two of you came to an agreement of sorts and lived together for about five years. Like the blood-brothers of old days: _un pain, un vin, une bourse*_. And yet not quite like brothers. The nature of your blissful union was rather impious. Suffice it to say that every morning, one of you would curse the other's pointy elbows as he crawled out of your single narrow bed to go to work. Which one? Both of you, in turn. Your work was in the Cité – his in Hotel Dieu, yours near the Prefecture. Your shifts lasted two days, with a day's rest in between. So most mornings, one of you would sleep in, and the other would be out the door before dawn. On rare days when your schedules coincided, you had coffee and eggs together by the window."

'The true character of your relationship was not a secret. At first people whispered about you, but by and by the gossip stopped being interesting. You were both "busy young men of profession"; you were never lewd or drunk in public; you always settled your bills on time. This earned the two of you good standing with all the shop-keepers, and from there with the rest of the neighborhood. Soon you were lending and borrowing two sous for milk from the neighbors, inquiring after their children, and holding forth in the wine-shop downstairs about the rubbish on "our street" and the broken glass in "our street-lamps." The _modistes_ working on the third floor thought it colossal fun to occasionally come up to your flat and ask you to help them lace up their dresses.'

'Sometimes, there would be trouble in the street. When it was a matter of peace-keeping, you were expected to intercede before the soldier patrol was hailed. When it was a medical matter, your consort was on call for everyone. You broke up fights; he set broken bones. If work kept one of you away from home for days on end, the portress brought the other supper and fussed over him.'

'It became a running joke with the men of your acquaintance that surely you must be the happiest of them all: no woman's nagging or children's squealing constantly in your ears. And they were right. You were by far the happiest. On Sundays, you ran in the street like an overgrown idiot, kicking a leather ball with the neighborhood lads, while your consort watched from the open window, calling fouls against you and pelting you with roasted chestnuts. You lived well. There were not enough hours in the day.'

'One frosty evening, the two of you were returning from the New Year's Day supper at the house of a mutual friend, your arms around each other, tipsy and laughing like students. Suddenly, a group of three men with hands in their pockets appear in an alley to your right. You recognized two of them. Your squad nabbed them some months prior – one for armed robbery, the other for murder. They were supposed to be in La Force, awaiting trial. Someone failed to keep a close enough eye on the latch, and they did not stay put.'

'Things unraveled very quickly. A monstrous maneuver was executed. On command from the fellow who had gone down for murder, six guns were pulled out of pockets and raised. On second command, all six guns were fired at once.'

'Your memories of the evening ended there. Later you were told by your neighbors that the porter of the building across the street, a veteran like yourself, rushed out to your aid with a hunting rifle. But by then the assassins were long gone, and he only found the two of you, entangled in a huge pool of bloody slush. You received a single nick on the inside of your arm. Your kind friend had his entire chest shredded. Five bullets! The men were either very bad shots or very devious fiends.'

'You were a terrifying sight. Your mouth was covered in blood - his blood, not your own. He was gushing blood from his mouth, and you had been kissing him, or perhaps trying to breathe for him. When the porter tried to pry you from his body, so that it might be taken away to be washed for burial, you howled and struck the good man in the face…'"

Javert's voice trailed off. He let go of the rope end he had been fiddling with, swallowed once and closed his eyes.

* * *

*_un pain, un vin, une bourse_ - fr., "one bread, one wine, one purse." In late medieval France, a certain type of legal contract called "affrèrement" - roughly translated as 'brotherment' - was sometimes drawn up between two men. The newly-made "brothers" pledged to live together sharing all their property in common and designate each other as heirs. Some scholars speculate that "affrèrements" were often used by homosexual couples in place of Church-approved marriage unions to give their relationship legal standing.


	48. Ch 45, part three

"I told Patroclus more things besides, but you do not need to hear them," he continued, with his eyes still closed. "The whole time I spoke, he was silent – a rare thing for him. When I was done, he got off my bed, put on his shoes and left. He forgot his hat. I learned later that week that he spoke to Gisquet about the pensions himself. He was assured of them, on condition that he remain on this assignment and continue his reports. He did remain, and they did continue. But they were no longer his. Patroclus had crawled into a bottle again and did not crawl back out. I wrote those reports for him."

"It was not easy. I had no passport to the inner sanctum of the club. Instead, I combed through inspectors' summaries; I bribed gamins; I stood in line for milk in every quarter in hopes of hearing someone chatter. Eventually, I turned to workers' associations. My face became well-known in cantinas like the one on Barriere Fontainebleau that we were in last night. I began to walk about in a short jacket over a vest, so as not to stand out among them. They laughed: 'Where's your big coat and hat, Inspector Javert?' I overheard little, but one or two of those tips panned out lucky; some more bullet-molds were found, and Patroclus was not suspected of sleeping on the job."

"By late May, hysteria about the police poisoning the public water wells with cholera was more rampant than cholera itself. Mobs began to congregate and strike out against men who fell under the suspicion of belonging to the police. Lynch law infected the fabourgs."

"I continued to frequent workers' halls. No one lifted a finger against me, though many of the regulars knew that I was a policeman. Perhaps they simply could not imagine Inspector Javert sneaking at night to the public fountains to poison them with choleric distillations. Once, someone did suggest that I was there as a spy, but the idea was shouted down. I sat at my table alone, had no notebook with me, did not attempt to enter into conversation with anyone, resisted attempts at conversation by others, and spent most of the time looking into my plate or my glass, not faces. It was judged that if I was a spy, then I was a lazy and incapable spy, and as such, I ought to be allowed to continue bleeding the _Cigogne*_ of my salary until a better spy got hired to supersede me."

"When Lamarque's hearse set out through the streets on the fifth, I was at the Prefecture. It was a perfect moment. I asked Gisquet for permission to go mingle with the "reds", assess their armaments, and report back in the evening. The task proved difficult to secure. Gisquet was reluctant. Vidocq had already requested me to help him flush some game out of the _tapis francs_ of Ile de la Cité that night. I insisted that the municipal police needed a man to observe the rebels up close. Gisquet remarked that it already had such a man: Patroclus was still officially with the rebels, and his standing assignment remained in effect. I reminded Gisquet that while Patroclus was clever, he was not the Hindu god Krishna, and could not contrive to be in several places at once. If he left the barricade in the middle of the night, the Republicans would notice his absence and make his re-entry tricky. A second man, one unknown to them personally, was needed to assist the first."

"Eventually, Gisquet relented and gave me his blessing. I asked him to keep this from Vidocq for now, - 'So that he might not be cross about being deprived of me for his adventures in the Cité,' I said. This was true enough. The Prefect agreed. That was all I needed. When the mob passed Rue de Billettes, I joined it and took a place on the barricade. There was still a police identification card in my pocket."

"So there you sat behind the barricade, with your police card and an unloaded gun, hoping to be discovered and put to death," murmured Valjean.

Javert opened his eyes again and looked at Valjean with suspicion.

"How did you know it was unloaded?"

"I didn't. It was an educated guess."

"A fine thing, education."

"You've certainly extended mine a fair ways tonight." Valjean heard bitterness in his own voice.

"The questions came from you. You oughtn't to have asked if you weren't prepared to hear the answers."

"You're right, I wasn't prepared."

"Oh! Well then! By the Holy Virgin's immaculate petticoats, allow me to extend my deepest and most contrite apologies to your inexhaustible deposits of virtue!" said Javert venomously.

"I meant that it never occurred to me that you were out on the barricade seeking martyrdom!"

"Oh? And only that?"

"Only that!"

Javert's temper abated.

"You must admit, Valjean, it was a solid little plan. The only thing I did not anticipate was your appearance, but even that seemed at first to play in my favor. If only you knew what a surge of joy went through me when you asked Achilles if you could blow my brains out yourself! I was already beginning to fear that he might have an attack of magnanimity and simply leave me tied to the post for the soldiers to liberate. I was ready to thank God for you then. You led me away into that alley... I could barely walk but oh, I was ready to fly! You took out the clasp-knife, and I thought: of course, he will use a _surin_ instead of wasting their precious bullets. And then the distress of watching you cut away my ropes! Of hearing you say: 'You are free'!"

"I felt robbed, Valjean! I had done such a good job. I was going to die on duty. I provided for a legitimate means of extinguishing my debt. I gave good counsel to a fellow sufferer. I earned that death! But then you saw fit to introduce yourself, once again, into a debacle that did not concern you. Another act of monstrous unasked-for goodness from Jean Valjean! In Russia, they call such clumsy solicitousness 'a bear's service.' That was what you rendered me with that act of mercy, Valjean – a bear's service!"

Javert gave a particularly violent full-body twitch against his ropes. He had talked himself back into a snit.

"And my bad luck didn't stop there! I came out of that alley alive, confused, angry as an imp of Satan dunked into the baptismal font – and in that condition, I was then obligated to go testify to Gisquet that that I owed my life and my successful escape to a man named Fauchelevent! Couldn't have bloody well told him your real name, could I? Jean Valjean is supposed to be dead!"

"Gisquet must have thought me mad. His eyebrows were performing the queerest calisthenics on his forehead while he listened to me. I had never lied to him before, and I was making a perfect hash of it. Halfway through my verbal report, I developed a stutter and had to excuse myself from his presence. I went to pace the _salle des pas perdus_ to calm myself. My teeth clatterred so loudly it echoed off the marble walls! I almost had another fit right there on the floor. When I was more certain that I would not fall over, I went back to Gisquet for another assignment. And then in the middle of the night, just as I achieved some measure of resignation and serenity playing tag with some scoundrel loitering around a sewer exit, up you came through the ground, like a goddamned jack-in-the-box! I said to myself then: that's it!.. I'm done for!.. this is what true madness feels like!.."

"What became of Patroclus?" interrupted Valjean.

"Well! you should ask! Since he had no one to inconsiderately spoil his plans, he succeeded in them."

"He is dead, then?"

"When the soldiers retreated, the police found him on the floor at Achilles' feet. The firing squad got them both in one blow." Javert growled. "The lucky sod! So much of my hard work went into that death! Goddamn thieves, both of you!"

Visibly enraged, the ex-inspector slammed a shoulder against the wall behind him. Then he stilled for a moment, his eyes contemplating the wall intently, as though it had been the one to undermine his plans. Then he hit it again, with even more ferocity.

"So here is my second bowl, Valjean!" he hissed at the wall. "How come that no matter where I go, there you are, ready to bollocks things up for me? I work in Toulon – and there you are."

Another shove to the same spot.

"I go from Paris to live in a nice quiet little town – and there you are!"

Crumbs were beginning to fall from around the stone.

"I leave the nice quiet little town to return to Paris – and there you are!"

Valjean could have sworn he saw the stone move under Javert's last assault.

"I finally execute a plan to die honorably, every loose end tidied up – and there! you! fucking! are!"

With Javert's last curse, the stone came dislodged and fell into Valjean's lap.

A secret chamber yawned from the wall.

* * *

* Cigogne – the prefecture of police; Palais de Justice; criminal authorities ('the stork', because it eats frogs/Parisians, presumably)


	49. Ch 46

"I could well ask you the same thing," said Valjean distractedly, staring at the hole in the wall. Once again, Javert managed to completely jumble up his thoughts. "What in our good Lady's name is that?"

"That, my dear Valjean, is a suspicion confirmed," said Javert. The smugness on his face shone through the dark like a lamp. The enraged victim of fate was gone, and in his place was once again a sharp police agent. "That stone just didn't sit right with me. As it turns out, neither did it sit right with the wall. Would you kindly reach into the stash and tell me if it's full or empty?"

Valjean complied. The hollow between the stones, barely wide enough to admit his hand, extended far enough into the wall to swallow his arm up to the elbow.

"What a fantastically thick wall," murmured Valjean.

"I doubt it's any thicker than it ought to be," replied Javert pensively. "Think about it. One digs a hole in the ground. One digs a hole sideways in the dirt. One layers it with stone. One then lays a regular wall across it, with one stone loose."

"That makes sense," admitted Valjean. His fingers found something.

"Well? Full or empty? Do not extract anything. Just say if there is something there or not."

"There is." Valjean's fingers felt something firm. "I think it's a leather pouch, and it is not empty."

"Ah hah!" exclaimed Javert in triumph. "Spectacular. Withdraw your hand, if you please. No offense meant, but I cannot allow you to handle evidence. Not just yet."

It was as if nothing of import had been said between them in the last half-hour. This time, Valjean refused to be derailed.

"This is all well and good, but as you like to say, let us return to our muttons. Do you honestly think I've been stalking you around the country for the past thirty years?"

"There are times when I do not know what to think. You have to admit, we meet improbably often. France is hardly a village pub for us to keep running into each like that."

"For what possible purpose would I follow you? All I ever wanted in life was to stay as far away from… now what are you doing?"

Javert's body was performing slow, almost lascivious-looking undulations on the straw. Valjean was reminded of the python from Jardin des Plantes trying to force an entire rabbit down into her stomach.

"The time has come for me to get out of this lace," said Javert through clenched teeth.

"You will never manage it without something sharp. Say, didn't you have a pen-knife on you?"

"I did."

"Well, use it!"

"I said that I did, not that I do."

"They took it, then?"

"Of course they took it. That's why I had it in the first place – for them to take."

"I don't understand."

Javert rolled his eyes.

"One searches a man. One finds a penknife. One takes it. One ties up the man." His sentences were now forced out in short, irregular bursts of strained breath. "One asks oneself: might he get out of the ropes? And one answers oneself: not now that I've taken away his knife. A sleeping draught for their vigilance."

"Well, no matter. I have a special sou on me for just such an occasion."

"The hollowed-out one, with a little saw of blue steel in it?"

"Ah, of course - you're familiar with the device."

"Twenty minutes I've spent on that cold floor with my arse in the air, searching," replied Javert peevishly. "_Dame! _yes, I'm familiar with the device."

"Last time you mentioned this, it was only a quarter of an hour," teased Valjean.

"I lied to spare my own pride. Frankly, I'm lying now again, for the same reason. It was actually a full half an hour. My eyes are good, but I am not a cat. Incidentally, familiar as I am with the device, I also know well how it usually gets concealed from searching hands. Shall I turn away to preserve your modesty?"

Valjean felt himself flush again.

"It's in a pocket somewhere," he mumbled, patting himself down. "I'm not at the galleys anymore; I don't get frisked. There's no reason to carry it up my behind."

"One would think so," said Javert with comical thoughtfulness. "Except one would on occasion be wrong."

Valjean had by then searched and turned out all his pockets onto the straw, twice. The saw-blade sou had vanished, along with the rest of his coins.

"This is very strange," wondered Valjean. "Where has it gone?"

"Nine to one, into Barre-Carosse's purse."

Valjean remembered Barre-Carosse stumbling in the dark and groping his jacket to retain balance. He cursed under his nose.

"No honor between thieves, what?" Javert snorted out a snicker through his nostrils.

Annoyed, Valjean rose to his feet. "Stay where you are. This is a wine cellar - I'll break a bottle; we'll use the edge."

"Don't trouble yourself." Javert re-commenced his peculiar gymnastics. "I permit no cutting of any kind. I need these ropes to remain intact."

"You can't seriously be planning to just wriggle out of them?"

"I am indeed."

"Didn't you say Guelemer was most thorough in tying you up?"

"I did say so. He was quite thorough. But he is not a very clever man, my Guelemer. He had no idea whom he was tying up."

Javert sat up with a jerk, carefully braced himself against the wall and knelt in the straw, bending his head low to the ground. But for the ropes and the long blonde hair falling around his face, he looked like Louis the Pious doing public penance at Attigny.

"I'll need a few minutes…" he mumbled. "Ah! If only this were a strait-jacket! I would already be free then. But this is no strait-jacket..."

"You can get out of a strait-jacket?" asked Valjean, fascinated.

Javert exhaled a half-strangled laugh.

"No trouble. Though there are variables. For instance, the size of the thing. Sometimes they give you one too small to do anything but sit there and feel your elbows swell. Also, it matters who's putting me into it. Brother Chesnel tied the sleeves very tight but often neglected the bottom straps. Other brothers were not attentive enough to make me exhale. There are many ways."

"Who is 'Brother Chesnel'? Who are 'the others'?"

"The attendant brothers at Charenton."

"The royal house of Charenton?" Valjean's head swam. "The lunatic asylum?!"

"Don't shout. Yes, the royal house of something-for-everyone at Charenton. For a lunatic, asylum… for a criminal, detention… For a man in despair betrayed by his employer, an infuriatingly chirpy chaplain and a strait-jacket."

At this, Javert pulled in his hands close to his chest, folded his right hand in half, pressing the thumb to the little finger, and slowly pulled it free from the restraints.

"And many hours of useful practice wriggling out of it," he finished with low-key triumph.


	50. Ch 47

Having freed one of his hands, Javert quickly loosened the binds around the other. Now only his middle remained encircled by cattle-rope, tightly wound and knotted in several places.

"No cutting," he reminded Valjean as they set to undoing the knots. "I need the entire length of the thing, intact."

"What do you intend to use it for after you've undone it?" asked Valjean, attempting at nonchalance.

"Not what you think."

"What's that?"

"Look, if I wanted to hang myself, I would do it someplace without witnesses. Besides, there is nothing in this cellar to attach the rope to."

"There is the rail."

"Don't be silly. That worm-eaten stick would never hold a hundred and sixty pounds of swinging weight," muttered Javert as he watched Valjean's fingers fumble with a tight knot at his midsection. Then suddenly, both of his hands were flat and warm on Valjean's chest, and he was pushing Valjean away.

"What's the matter?" said Valjean. Something inside him twinged unhappily. "It's getting looser. Let me..."

"Go up the stairs and put an ear to the door," muttered Javert as he began tugging at the knot himself. "They've gone awfully quiet up there."

It had indeed become very quiet. Valjean came up and lay down on the top stair to listen through the crack under the door. At first he heard nothing. Then he heard a comical noise and realized someone was snoring.

"Someone's still up there, sound asleep," he said. "I hear snores."

"What sort of snores?" asked Javert. "Big, cavernous snores or high-pitched, whistling snores?"

Valjean listened some more. "Low and rumbling. It must be Guelemer."

"On the contrary, it must be anyone but Guelemer. For all his fantastic bulk, the man snores like a pipsqueak."

A shiver ran down Valjean's spine. "I don't suppose it'd be wise of me to ask how you came to find this out," he said.

"Is that all you hear?" asked Javert, ignoring Valjean's uneasy stare. "No pots clanging, cutlery scraping, wine-glasses clinking? No conversation?"

"Just the snoring. I think the others might be in the garden."

"Possibly," said Javert. "That's good if it's true."

He pushed the still-knotted rope coils down around his hips and stepped out of them. "Luckily, the elephant was kind enough to provide me with a lasso for himself – if I can ever manage to undo these bloody knots."

Valjean went back down the stairs and set to helping Javert again.

"So how did you say you found out about Guelemer's snoring?"

"I didn't say. But I see you've already made a guess."

"Frankly, after the way you had me going about that Marie fellow in the carriage, I'm reluctant to guess at anything where you are concerned."

"Wise of you."

For a few minutes, they worked in silence. Finally, Javert remarked:

"You know, I can see you sneaking all those in turn incredulous and revolted looks at me. Why don't you just ask me outright and set your mind at ease?"

"It's none of my business to ask about."

"Fine, I'll have pity on you this time. No."

"What , 'no'?"

"No, I did not sleep with Guelemer. I was briefly undercover a few months ago and had the occasion to chew the fat with his recently-former concubine. She was quite sour at him at the time, so I got to hear all sorts of interesting gossip about him. And you know, it's really rather distressing how you keep assuming the worst about me now."

"Well, I wouldn't know where you draw the line in your… _amours_."

"I suppose to your mind, the greater immorality of taking a man to bed would swallow up the lesser immorality of consorting with a murderer." Javert sounded bitter.

"Look…" Valjean tried to gather his thoughts in a way that his friend would not find hurtful. "Give me a bit of time to adjust to this new you, alright? This is all a great shock to me. I've always been under the impression that you were a paragon of chastity."

"It was not a false impression. I have been alone for almost thirteen years now."

"What of your… you know, your 'brother'?"

"When I say 'my brother,' I mean 'my brother,' and not anything else. We were fathered by the same man. There are papers verifying this. He is my brother."

"Ah. I never knew you had siblings."

"Until a couple of years ago, neither did I. We met accidentally." Javert cursed. "The devil take Guelemer for tying these knots so tight! This is taking longer than I thought."

He threw down his side of the coils into Valjean's lap. "You've untangled one already; you deal with the rest. The rope plainly likes you better. I'll go look for something we can use to stall our friends upstairs."

He looked around the cellar.

"A metal thing is needed," he said.

"What sort of 'metal thing'?"

"A long, skinny metal thing, with a bulging top end. To bolt the door vertically. It opens inwards. We do not want it opening just yet."

They searched the cellar.

"No crowbars," said Valjean. "And all the crates are nailed shut."

"Surely not all of them," said Javert, standing up and attempting to remove the top of the one closest to him. It did not yield. "Let us try a few."

"I could smash one for you," offered Valjean and tried lifting the one by his side. It was lighter than he expected, and nothing in it made noise. Whatever it held, it was not full bottles of wine.

"Let's comport ourselves like men and not like orang-outans," said Javert. "Smashing things is not always the solution to one's problems. Aha!"

The third crate gave way. Bizarrely, it was filled with rags, old shoes, and other rubbish. Javert rummaged in its musty contents and removed from it a colossal skeleton key. It looked fit to open the gate to a fairy-tale giant's fortress, though the likelihood was greater that it had been nicked from the door of some prison.

"This will do nicely."

They ascended the stairs together.

"How come this door can be barred from the inside to begin with?" wondered Valjean. "This seems unnecessary in a wine cellar."

Javert squatted for a closer look.

"The latch is newly installed," he said. "See the fresh masonry around it? Perhaps when the place changed hands a few weeks ago, the new owner came with other plans for this cellar than simply warehousing wine. And the plans did not involve having anyone barge in on him."

Carefully, Javert slid the key down into the holes of the latch and smiled.

"Perfect. Why, it's almost as though it were meant for the job!"


	51. Ch 48

Having enhanced the security of their seclusion, Javert made his way back to the yawning chamber in the wall and assumed before it a pose of theatric pensiveness, with one fist against his mouth and the other against his waist.

"Hmm!" he said. "Hm hm hm. Well, that is fine."

And, crouching down to pick up the dislodged stone, he began cautiously working it back into place.

"Don't you want to see what is in there?" asked Valjean.

"In good time," replied Javert, maneuvering his fingertips so that the edges of the stone wouldn't inadvertently crush them. "I would rather not disturb the evidence without a couple of inquest witnesses."

"Do you already know what's in there?"

Javert leaned his right fist against the stone floor, pitched slightly forward on it like an overgrown ape, and aimed a solemn gaze at the wall. It looked once again intact.

"I can make, as you say, an educated guess," he said. "It would be easier if I did not have to guess, but only easier right now. Later on, it might turn things more difficult. This is a rotten sort of cellar. When we are done, I may need not just witnesses in here, but also representatives of the Crown prosecutor."

Javert turned to Valjean.

"This is going to be a big case," he said. "It's a pity that we can't have you write a sworn statement. At least under your true name. If you cannot take a legally recognized oath, you cannot figure as a witness. Although…"

Javert got up and waved his forefinger in the air, as if building a logical chain.

"…Although this could come in handy to expedite the process of your pardon. Yes, that wouldn't be bad. We shall make the appeal for you soon. I shall have Bernard take your case – he is a very good lawyer, Bernard, and he will be glad to be of service to me. He'll initiate your petition. We will make good use of your history as Mayor of M. sur M., and that bit of showmanship with the sailor on 'Orion' ought to do you a good turn also. By the time Bernard is through, he'll not just have your conviction fully dismounted – _Dame!_ he'll have you wearing a Cross. And once your citizenship is restored, we shall have you add a note or two to my deposition. What say you, a good plan?"

As he talked, Javert wandered over to Valjean's side and took a seat close by him, picking up a rope end to fiddle with. Valjean felt tears well up in his eyes.

"I cannot do this."

"You don't want a pardon?"

"I do not want to send men to the guillotine."

"What men?"

"Any men! I cannot have my words assist in sentencing someone to death."

"Even a proved assassin?"

"Even an assassin."

"Then you are refusing to become an agent in the Sûreté_?_

"I do not want to refuse. But if it would require me to do this… then I cannot."

Javert sank his fingers into his hair, then remembered the wig and pulled them back out so as not to jostle it.

"Well, that's unfortunate."

"I'm sorry. How long will you give me?"

"To do what?"

"To wrap up my affairs."

Javert stared.

"Are you making plans to die? That would be fiendishly unkind of you."

"Not to die – to go to prison."

"You are going to turn yourself in? Whatever for?"

Valjean frowned.

"I thought you… isn't my freedom contingent on my participation in the Sûreté?"

Javert sighed and lay down on the floor, putting his head once again in Valjean's lap.

"Your freedom is contingent only on you not being out of our sight again. Like I told you before, think of it as a resumption of your parole, with me and Eugene as your parole officers. He admires you, you know. Professionally, at least. We both do. You are one crafty old fox. But let's face the facts: you lack basic social instincts. You don't so much consciously break laws as ignore them altogether. I was wrong about you before – you are not vicious. But you are tremendously dangerous. And I think you yourself would agree with that."

Valjean thought about it.

"I am not dangerous, as long as I'm left alone," he finally said.

Javert began to massage his rope-stiffened legs.

"You live in a city of a million people, Valjean. And as long as you are among people, you will never be left alone. You will always have to square with others' rights and liberties as well as your own. And you simply are incapable of this. Remember when you were breaking down doors in M. sur M. to leave money on people's tables? Don't imagine for a second I didn't know whose handiwork that was. There was but one person in the city – no, in the province! in the country! – who could be at once so eager to help and so perverse in their methods. This is what I mean by a lack of social instincts. It did not occur to you when you were twenty-five to simply ask the baker for some bread as a loan, and it did not occur to you when you were fifty-five to simply post the money to persons you considered needy. Or to use a courier. Or a curé. Or a box tied with a ribbon. No, no – a door stood in the way of your good intentions, so it had to come down. You saw nothing at all wrong with this. This is why you cannot be left to your own devices."

"So what will you have me do if not be an agent?"

"Oh, you're still going to be an agent. We are giving your name to the Prefecture. But you don't have to write out depositions if you don't want to. I'm not about to let you gallivant around on your own anyway, so I can do the writing for both of us. I enjoy writing reports, believe it or not. There is an art to report-writing that I believe I've quite mastered over the years."

"Javert, can I throw out a third bowl?"

"Certainly. We have the time for it."

"You are a good cop. Observant, thorough in your inquiries. Why did you insist on arresting Fantine that day? If you had asked anyone, you would have learned that she was not to blame for the fight. The man started it first. But you did not ask anyone, you simply arrested her. How come?"

"Once again, you ask with what you think is the foreknowledge of the answer, solely to pass judgment. This is a very bad habit. It betrays a lazy mind. Isn't there anything else you might want to ask me? Something that you could not easily deduce by yourself?"

"I used to hold grudges against you. I am finding now that this is the only one that remains. You were horrid to a miserable dying young mother who sold everything she had to support her child. How could you do this?"

"How could I do this?" Javert snorted. "You are like a priest who finds a sweet in the pocket of the boy he is sodomizing and reads him a sermon about spoiling his dinner. Or did you forget that it was your establishment that kicked her out into the streets for having a bastard in the first place?"

"I never knew about her being turned out, believe me."

"Oh, come now. You did not have to physically turn her out of the building to be responsible for this. Did you not institute a strict rule for your workmen and workwomen that they ought to be chaste and honest?"

"Yes, but…"

"Did you not separate the sexes at work, so as to remove even the possibility of their temptation?"

"Sure."

"Did you not hire foremen and forewomen of nosy dispositions and instruct them to enforce sexual continence among your employees? Well? I hear no answer."

"I did, I suppose."

"So how come you are surprised that the alphabet blocks you yourself arranged so carefully ended up spelling 'Out, whore'?"

"I accept full responsibility for her downfall. But I want to know why you were so evil to her. Did you hate her for some personal reason?"

"Hated her! What an idea. I tried to think as little of her as possible. The silly woman drove me crazy."

"How so?"

Javert turned towards him.

"You must be joking. You don't know?"

"I don't know – that's why I ask."

"Well, you must have been the only one in town who did not know, then! The jade was in love with me."


	52. Ch 49

Author's Note: I swear the action will pick up again soon. Apparently, the boys have more to say to each other than I had thought.

-------------------------------------------------------

The words came out of Valjean's mouth before he could stop them.

"You are lying."

Javert looked at him with wide, unblinking gray eyes, in which there was nothing - not even reproach.

"A mistake," corrected himself Valjean. "You are making a mistake."

"If it was a mistake, it's one that a great deal of people made. Quite often to my face and with laughter."

Javert sighed.

"She didn't have the hardiness needed for that profession, your Fantine. She kept looking around for a protector, a savior. But she was not beautiful enough to temp any man of standing into making her his mistress. The soldiers were not tempted either, and also they were rude. She probably picked me because there was simply no one else. I was harsh with her, but harsh without profanity, and I was never a client – hers or anyone's."

"She found ways to hover around the station. She started making excuses to address me. At first, I thought she was intent on going straight and was gearing up to ask me to remove her from the list of public women. Then I looked through the list and realized that she had not been on it to begin with. I thought that she was trying to approach me to make her accord with police regulations – have her name entered, undergo examinations, pay dues. I detained her once or twice to converse on the subject. She blushed a whole lot but said little. She did not want to be on the lists, and she did not want to be off them. She hated her profession but couldn't afford to stop. I threatened to jail her for non-compliance. She relented and went to the doctor. Only she was too timid to tell the man the real reason for her visit, and he took her pulse instead of looking where it actually mattered. When I found this out, I detained her again. She promised to pay the doctor a proper visit once she scraped together enough money for back-owed fees. I decided to forget about her while I had other things to deal with - you were running me ragged with all sort of nonsense, and I was actually glad of it. She got the hint and stayed good and quiet, to avoid engaging my attention. It was a thorn in my side to have her walk about unregistered, but I could justify letting it slide as long as I stayed busy with other matters."

"Our cease-fire came to an abrupt end when I caught her _mec_ beating her outside a wineshop. They were both drunk out of their tiny minds. I came to break them up and was mortified. The man looked far too much like me. Where she dug up a Gypsy, I don't even know – netted a stray one somewhere – there was no _tabor_ in the area. I threatened him with arrest, and he was off like a shot. The girl saw his heels flash and tried to collapse into my arms. I propped her up against a wall and reminded her to go to the damn doctor, or I'll have her in jail for three months before she could say 'twenty-five sous for an upright.' She cackled at me. Just then, her friends poked their bonneted heads from around the corner. They had been watching the whole spectacle unfold. _Nom d'un chien! _There are jokes that make cab-drivers blush; there are jokes that make the cab-drivers' horses blush; and then there are jokes that public women toss around among themselves. They saw no reason to hold back in my presence. They'd taken my measure long ago; a sod to them was as good as a sister – even a police sod, with a cane and a scowl. Since then, I had no peace from them – Fantine was my belle, I was her _preux chevalier, _and they wouldn't let go of it. From them, the officers caught the joke; then the idlers; then everyone else. Half the town thought me a blackguard for making a whore my mistress; the other half thought me a fool for picking such an ugly one. And you remained graciously tactful and reasonable, or so I thought. Now I know you were simply uninformed. What would you have done, I wonder, had you heard? Would you have questioned me?"

"I doubt it," said Valjean. "I have a difficult time talking of such things with people."

"I thought as much."

"Was this why you screamed at her? Because she undermined your reputation?"

"I didn't care two figs about my reputation. That's not why I screamed. She was simply there, and I needed to vent. It was you I was mad at - she just got caught in the cross-fire. It was not kind, I admit, but I'm not a kind man. And there was another thing…"

Javert chewed his bottom lip.

"I wasn't receptive to her flirtations, but some part of me was gratified by them. Almost no one in that town could stand me. You were friendly enough, but I could not trust you. The head of the dispensary was almost kind, but we saw each other rarely. The polite society closed itself off to me after the rumors began flying about me and the girl. It was nice to hear honest notes of admiration in someone's voice – even if it was female and hoarse with hooch. There was little I could do for her beyond letting her off the hook for her dues – she told me she sent every sou to "those peasants" for her sick daughter's upkeep, and I could see that she was not lying. She had nothing. Not even decent shoes to walk around in the snow in the winter. Not even a warm shawl. She might have saved up for them, but she chose to drink brandy instead. That accounted for all the money she spent on herself. Brandy is cheap. I told her to quit it many times. She would promise to go off it, then she'd get drunk again. I'd have her sit for a night in the jail cell to sober up, then released her back on the streets. What else could I do?"

"As long as she brawled with her own kind, I could avert my eyes. But then she attacked an elector, someone of actual standing in the town. I became quite furious with her. She had exhausted my patience. I decided to have her off the streets, this time for good. She was becoming a nuisance to public peace and a danger to herself. Then you intervened, and everything went sideways. The next time I saw her, she was in the hospital, and you were sitting by her side like a nurse. I confess, I felt somewhat betrayed. You were the one who did this to her, but she was ready to forgive you for a couple of kind words and some money. I had tried to help her out for two years, by all methods available to me, but she seemed to recall none of it. It was "Monsieur le Maire" this and "Monsieur le Maire" that. I couldn't resist taking you down a peg in front of her. I saw that she was gasping for breath, but such is late stage phthisis. Then you said I killed her. I was ready to strike you, then - I'd had such a fill of your hypocrisy, your sanctimoniousness, your falsehoods! And then I saw her laying there, eyes open, chest still under the covers, and I realized that you were right: she was dead."

"It was the first time I saw a death up close since Isaac. That opaque stillness in her eyes – I had seen it cover his own. I almost fled the room, but I forced myself to halt after a few steps. I did not love her. I knew she was dying, and I did not think I would regret her when she was gone. But once it happened, I was on the verge of tears. The world went a bit hazy. When I came back to my senses, you were standing in front of me and saying that you were at my disposal."


	53. Ch 50

"I suppose I can understand that," murmured Valjean. "After all, it wasn't so different with me and Little Gervais."

Javert raised an eyebrow

"Well well! was Little Gervais in love with you, too?"

Valjean refused to be baited.

"I mean, when I ran into him – when he ran into me, rather, - I was angry and confused, and he was just… there. I lashed out at him without the least intent to do him any harm. When I realized what I'd done, it already couldn't be undone, you know?"

Javert sighed and stretched like a cat. "Such is life. No later undoing will undo the first undoing."

He pulled at one of rope knots ineffectively. "I wish I could say I was always perfect in my comportment. But I was not. I am not. I lose my temper far too easily, especially when I'm distraught over something. "

"Well, you're human. Fits of temper happen to everyone, even to irreproachable police agents."

Javert gave a mournful laugh.

"Oh! You wouldn't say that if you knew some of the people I know. Take Prefect Gisquet himself. The man had shot several fingers off his hand in a hunting accident, and do you know what he said about it? 'Looks like I'll be saving half on all my gloves from now on.' How's that for cold blood?"

"You were always harsher on yourself than on anyone else. I remember how upset you were after denouncing me."

Javert moaned a bit and covered his eyes with his wrist theatrically.

"To this day, I don't know how I let myself do it."

"I bet I know what you were thinking," smiled Valjean. "You were thinking: 'Who does this suspicious fruit think he is, invading my sovereign territory with his unnatural acts of social rearrangement and misguided charity?'"

Javert snorted. "Overshot."

"Overshot?"

"By five or six lengths of the _boule_."

"So why did you denounce me?"

"If I had thought that you were doing what you were doing out of charity, I would have probably held back. But I was already thinking of you as Jean Valjean then, not Mayor Madeleine. This made me rash. I thought your performance was a pre-emptive strike."

"Against whom?"

"Against myself."

Valjean couldn't repress an incredulous laugh.

"Preposterous!"

"It was the most logical conclusion I could reach at the time. Everything added up. You were Jean Valjean - you feared that I would identify you after seeing you perform your feat of strength with Father Fauchelevent's cart – naturally, you desired to see me turned out so that I could not identify you. This was a perfect moment. Had I obeyed you, my career would have been destroyed."

"Your career, destroyed? Through the release of a public woman?"

"It would have been more than enough."

"I am utterly at a loss. How in Heaven's name would that have happened?"

"Think of what you wanted me to do. You wanted me to release Fantine, a public girl, and detain instead her erstwhile assailant turned victim Sieur Bamatabois, a townsman. Arrest him 'properly,' I recall you say. Unthinkable!"

"What would have been unthinkable about releasing that poor innocent woman and arresting the real malefactor?"

"Where does one start! In the first place, was she an innocent woman?"

"Of the offense you accused her of? Yes!"

"And what did I accuse her of?"

"Flinging herself on that horrible man."

"Did she not, then?"

"She was only retaliating hurt for hurt. The villain put snow down her dress!"

"Ah, so you do think I should have detained him instead of her! An elector, a house-proprietor, detained for putting snow down a prostitute's gown. Well, that is something! How did you imagine that happening precisely? What was I to charge him with? Acting unkindly towards a streetwalker? For a first-time offender, a snowball does not stretch out into assault. Detention of public women is a matter left to the discretion of the police. Detention of citizens and electors is not. You certainly seemed to know the relevant articles of the Code well enough when you quoted them back to me – and why not? even the Devil might quote Scripture for his own ends. So what do you think: should I have simply thrown him in jail or gone to seek a warrant for his arrest? Arraigned him before an examining judge?"

Valjean refused to budge. "Two nights in jail would've sufficed. Detention for disturbing the public peace does not require a warrant or a filed complaint, provided he was out in forty-eight hours."

"So, two nights in jail for his snowball, but freedom for the girl, though she bruised him quite famously in retaliation? Fine, let's have it so. Let's imagine that I released her, as you commanded, and brought the oaf Bamatabois to the jail instead. _En bonne police, _just as you wanted. Brought along two soldiers of the guard, dragged him out of the inn where he habitually eats his dinner, escorted him out in handcuffs, installed him in the jail."

"Within an hour, the whole town would be talking of nothing else. 'How now, mother Bourgogne,'" said Javert in an old woman's croak made all the more comical by his solemn and earnest expression. "'have you heard? Sieur Bamatabois is in jail!'

'Why, mother Cigogne," he answered himself in a slightly different croak, "I have not! Whatever for?'

'Why, mother Bourgogne, it's a tale such as you wouldn't believe! I was heading to the haberdasher's and saw the whole thing! Sieur Bamatabois was taking a stroll down the boulevard, peaceful as you please. A fancy struck him and he threw a snowball at a drunk public woman that was patrolling the same street. An innocent jest! But the vile harpy, soused as she was, became so furious that she threw herself on the poor man and began pummeling him, scratching his face and rending his clothes! And such vile oaths poured from her mouth, mother Bourgogne, as I have not heard since that water-carrier on our street accidentally crushed a toe under his barrel. No one dared help poor Bamatabois for fear of her. "Won't someone call the police?" I cried, and just then, that police fellow Javert came out onto the square and took the whore away with him. Well, thought I, at least some things are still in order in this world! But oh, the outrage! not half an hour later, as I was walking back from the haberdasher's past the police station, what should I see but that nasty woman and the inspector making pleasant small-talk as they part at the door! The obscenity of it! Truly, that man is despicable. And then, would you believe it? the blackguard had his men barge into "The Cat and the Yarn-ball" just as Sieur Bamatabois was dining there and arrest him! Such a spectacle! There was Sieur Bamatabois, led out in handcuffs for all the town to see, a roast chicken leg still clutched in one of his hands! I ask you, mother Bourgogne, what is the world coming to? A man of property so disgraced for jesting with a drunk public woman! And the woman coddled by the corrupt town inspector and released back onto the streets after violating Sieur Bamatabois as she did!'

'Mercy, mercy, mother Cigogne, what a travesty!'

'A travesty indeed, mother Bourgogne! These are bad times indeed, when the police make the public women their pets and an elector can get arrested at his dinner-table for throwing a snowball!'"

Javert raised his eyebrows at Valjean.

"How was that?" he asked in his usual voice. "Comprehensive? Or shall I continue? You say nothing - the main point of the matter must not have quite penetrated yet. I will continue."

"The same day as all this would take place, Sieur Bamatabois's good friend district attorney Sieur de Monfras would have had his personal courier on the evening _diligence _from Calais, clutching a complaint against me to Sieur Delavau, Prefect of Police at Paris. You look surprised, Valjean. Yes, Sieur de Monfras, the district attorney of Pas-de-Calais and the very good friend of Bamatabois, or rather of Bamatabois _p____è__re_! And oh, what joy would reign in the Paris Prefecture once the courier made his way to the Delavau's _cabinet particulier!_"

"But I thought you were on great terms with the central authorities," said Valjean. "Didn't you owe your post to the protection of Chabouillet, the Secretary to the Prefect?"

"Secretary to Prefect de Anglés, you ninny, not Prefect Delavau! Comte de Anglés had been superseded all of a month after I transferred to M. sur M., and his secretary was gone with him! Now do you see?"

"Were things that bad between you and the new Prefect?"

"Oh! They were bad. Delavau had not been happy that Chabouillet had de Anglés release me out to pasture into the provinces. He was even less happy that the previous administration had put such confidence in someone so utterly unsuited, in his opinion, to police service. To think of it: an utterly irreligious veteran from the Imperial Guard with known _gouts antiphysitiques,_ as one young colleague of mine puts it. Don't buy into the gossip that the Jesuits are all sods and great friends of sods - far from it. I was the boogeyman's boogeyman to them. But there were still men of some standing in Paris who owed me their gratitude for services rendered. Delavau could not turn me out on a whim. But with something this scandalous falling into his lap, he would have his justification at last. That missive would have been passed straight to Franchet-Desperey, Director of the Police at the Ministry of the Interior, and the retaliation against me would have been swift and jubilant."

"So this is how the whole adventure would have ended if you had had your way. I would have been cashiered. Sieur Bamatabois would have been freed with extensive apologies from the authorities bolstered by a sizeable compensation from the town coffers for trouble and humiliation incurred – a compensation which, in my understanding, the town could ill afford, since they were going halfsies with you on a second infant school at the time. A civil suit may have even been launched against your own person, since I had acted on your orders. And our dear damsel would have been arraigned before a judge and thrown, without too much dithering, into Les Madelonettes for three to five. What for? For violent assault. Why for so long a time? Well, you don't imagine this was her first time before the police, do you? She's seen the inside of that town's jail several times before, for brawls as well as other things. Don't imagine this would not get brought up. There was enough there to secure her quite the sojourn to "the country." With her phthisis as bad as it was, she would have likely expired in the jail at the assizes at Arras, waiting for her sentence."

"So now imagine my state of mind as I stood there, watching her rage and spit at you and yourself insist that she go free. Every wheel in my brain was turning in vain effort to figure out why you would want me to release this woman, who was obviously in no condition to be out in the cold or in public anymore, and who was being a harpy to you in my presence. And the only rational explanation I could conjure up was that you were setting me up for dismissal. Why? Because you were Jean Valjean, and you were afraid of me. Even the potential civil suit and loss of some money to Bamatabois would have been worth ensuring your freedom. And you were using a poor streetwalker as your pawn. She was half-crazy, ill and in despair. She thought she needed to be free, so as to continue earning her four or five francs a day for her daughter. She did not seem to understand that were she to go out into the snow again, she would be dead in the gutter within a few days. And the way you were insisting on her freedom, neither did you. But you were not crazy or drunk or desperate. So why did you want her free, when any honest and clear-thinking person could see that restoring her freedom would have meant condemning her to death?"

Valjean shook his head.

"I had nothing like that in mind. I wanted her to be in a hospital, in bed."

"Sure, sure! I know this now. But you did not say 'hospital' then. You said 'liberty.' In my humble understanding, securing her a hospital bed would have required for her to be in detention, with the state reimbursing the hospital for her stay. The town jail had no infirmary of its own. You made it an issue of charity and established her in your own house. Well! I am not a mind-reader, contrary to what some may believe. I had no idea you had such plans when you bade me let her go. I took you at your word, and that word was 'liberty.' You seemed intent on her walking out that door and getting right back on the streets."

"You did not say 'hospital' either – you said 'prison'! I wouldn't have been so brusque with you had you explained yourself!"

"Explained myself? To an ex-convict turned Mayor who felt himself on the verge of being discovered and was plainly scheming right before my eyes to have me dismissed from service? I was too busy thinking about your intentions to detail my own!"

"I still don't understand how you could think that I wanted her to return to that disgusting life."

"What indication was there that you did not?"

"Every indication! I said to her right there in the station that she would lead an honest life from that point on, that I would support both her and her child, that she would not need to work again!"

"I do not recall hearing anything of the sort."

Dumbstruck, Valjean dropped the coil of rope from which he was untangling the last knot. He remembered.

"That's right," he murmured. "You couldn't have heard any of this. I ordered you to leave the room."


	54. Ch 51

The rope, now untangled, lay across Valjean's lap. "We were both fools, it seems," he said with sad wistfulness.

"We were both rational men, after our own fashion," contradicted Javert, "But we worked on incomplete knowledge of facts, and we did not trust each other. It is in this manner that some undercover police agents end up collaring each other instead of actual criminals. What's to be done about it? This is how police operates. One must habitually make inferences and act on them without having all the facts, hoping that if you are wrong, the judicial investigation will set things right again."

He stood up and began turning his head side to side, as though solemnly signifying 'No, no, no'. This was to get out the last of the cricks induced by his forced immobility.

"Do you know what?" said Javert suddenly without pausing in his exercise. "I still have that boy's pocket-book."

"So return it to him."

Javert sucked his teeth. "I would rather give it to you to return. You can pretend you had it the while and forgot. Remember, it was Inspector Javert who took it, for legitimate inspectorial reasons. Inspector Javert, if you recall, is now dead, and so can't return anything to anyone. You, on the other hand, could return it to him at any time. Or to his family, as the case may demand."

"To him. He is doing quite well for a dead man," said Valjean with a touch of mockery.

"Well, good for him! Any bits lost to gangrene?"

"Not yet."

"Splendid. What are they using on his wounds?"

"Chloruretted lotions."

Javert frowned and paused with his hand on the back of his neck.

"Still? After a month? _Pardieu_! Are they intending to cure him or embalm him?"

"He is still feverish and delirious. The doctor is afraid of infection."

"One doesn't sacrifice integrity of tissues to fears of infection. If they persist in irritating the wounds with bleach, they'll just open up more sites for putrefaction! A whole month into treatment, it's silver nitrate they ought to be using! Who is his physician?"

"I don't know."

"Whoever he is, show him the door and invite Desplein."

"_Invite _Desplein? It would be easier to invite the Pope to give him extreme unction."

"Fine, invite that acolyte of his, Bianchon. _Entice _Desplein. You are a wealthy man. Promise him an endowment for Hotel-Dieu's surgeries. Grovel before him. Desplein is readily bought with charity, when it is combined with sincere groveling. You will probably not get him to attend to your boy regularly, but even one consultation will be invaluable."

"You speak as though you were personally acquainted with him."

"I am, in a way. We met thorough Isaac. He was one of Desplein's most promising pupils."

Javert crouched and began tying a sliding knot in the rope.

"I suppose if you and the boy's grandfather don't manage to entrap him with your money, I might attempt an appeal to his sentimentality," he continued. "Desplein is a fantastic grouch, but he always had a special affection for Isaac. I might be able to capitalize on those memories, if he still remembers me. We haven't spoken in over a decade. And re-introduction may be tricky, as I don't think he ever really learned my name."

"He's forgotten your name, you mean?"

"No, I do mean learned."

"But you say you have spoken. What did he call you in conversation?"

Javert laughed a little. "I wouldn't say he spoke _with_ me – more _through _me. Our usual conversations used to run about as follows: I would show myself silently at the threshold of some operating room; he would lift his head from the patient and say, 'Ah, it's thou. Is it seven o'clock already?' And then he'd roar out for the whole hospital to hear: 'Monsieur Edelstein, your husband has come to escort you home!'"

Valjean winced and exhaled a vocalization of sympathy.

"Oh, it was all in good jest. And then Isaac would call out from some other room, 'Five minutes,' or 'Ten minutes,' according to what sort of patient he was with. Then he would clean his hands and walk out to find me propping up the wall and swatting flies. He'd look in on his teacher to say goodbye, and we'd go off to sign him out for the day with one of Desplein's sarcastic little blessings at our back. His favorite one was 'Don't forget to get some sleep as well, my boy, you have early hours tomorrow!' Here we are, now – pretty, isn't it?"

And Javert demonstrated a perfectly tied sliding knot.

"Let the Mexican _vacqueros_ bother with bulls: tonight, you and I shall lasso ourselves an elephant!"

Valjean tightened it a few times and said:

"This is for Guelemer, then?"

"When we're all good and ready, yes." Javert scratched his head. "But this will eat at me now – since you are here as well, if we both die, who will return your son-in-law his pocketbook? You really ought to have stayed behind. It would've been much more convenient."

"Come, you didn't ask me to stay behind so that I might return his pocket-book for you. You didn't even tell me where it was."

"Vidocq could've told you that tomorrow, if you'd have simply waited for him. I left instructions with him."

"Instructions? To restore property to a dead man?"

"What mean you, 'dead man'? I thought you said he was alive?"

"Not in your understanding. The first thing you told me when you saw us by the sewer exit was, 'He is dead.' What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Close your eyes," demanded Javert.

Valjean complied.

A lightning-quick kiss landed on his forehead.

Valjean shied back, more from surprise than displeasure.

"What was that for?" he asked Javert, whose face betrayed nothing.

"For your sacred simplicity. I am beginning to realize that I will never make a police agent out of you."

"What did I overlook now?

"The coachman."

"What?"

"You overlooked the coachman. And the porter."

"More riddles!"

"Everything is a riddle to you. Think about it: you were asking me, an inspector of the police, to transport home a rebel from the barricades. A man whom I recognized as having raised weapons against the National Guard. Did it not strike you as even the least bit odd that I complied so readily?"

"I thought you wanted to do me a good turn for saving you."

"I wanted to give your neck a good turn for saving me! I helped you rescue the boy because I detest martial law. Only the state has the right to take a life, and only after due process. What the rebels did was vile, but what the soldiers did to them in return was no less so. Here is the core of the matter: if I hadn't done what I did, the boy would have died. And the matter of his life or death was not in my scope of decision. A living man can yet be brought to justice and made dead by it, but a dead man cannot be revived to be exonerated. Thus, logic dictates to always err on the side of saving a life. But as an agent of the authorities, I was directly prohibited from aiding him. Gisquet is all right in most police questions but he is a real beast in political ones. The standing orders that night were to pursue and arrest escaping rebels, not escort them home to be nursed by their loved ones. So I took the only real option open to me. You might guess by now what it was?"

Valjean shook his head.

"Think harder! Recall how the thing happened. Picture it in your head. I come down to the bank to see you with the boy. You tell me he is wounded. _Pardieu! _As though I were blind and couldn't see blood dripping out of him. Still, the boy looks convincingly corpse-like to a layman: pale, bloody, immobile, eyes shut. I feel his radial pulse. It is there, but it's _thready_ – rapid, very fine, hard to feel, easy to lose. I am confident now that I can play this straight. I declare that the boy is dead. You deny it, but it is immaterial – you are not likely to offer yourself up as a witness against me, nor would they allow you to be one even if you did."

"I call the coachman. We load the boy in and ride to Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. I knock and summon the porter. He sees before him a policeman, a coachman, a corpse and a shit demon. His evening instantly becomes memorable. I inform him that I come bearing a gift for the proprietor of the house: his dead son. Of course, I know from the boy's pocket-book that it's not his son but his grandson. But I want the porter to be maximally confused. He asks me what I'm going on about. I repeat myself, using different words: the man I bring had gone to the barricade and got himself killed. And then, to cement it in his mind, I say the same thing a third time, again in different words: there will be a funeral here tomorrow. I sound very certain of this, because I need to impress the fact of my certainty on both the porter and the coachman. If this comes to light, both of them are liable to be questioned. And they must be able to declare in immediate and honest unison that that clod of an inspector was absolutely sure that he was bringing back to Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire a body. Not a live rebel subject to arrest, but a body, an object without legal standing against which no criminal procedings could be undertaken! Now do you understand?"


	55. Ch 52

"I understand perfectly," said Valjean. He was becoming gloomy. "I understand that I am an idiot."

"Not true."

"Perfectly true. You know, when I was released from prison, they sent me to Pontarlier? I should have obeyed and gone to Pontarlier. The good bishop Myriel advised me to seek work at the local fruitieres as a _grurin_. I should have heeded the advice and become a cheese-maker. Or better yet, just a cowherd! And there, you are snickering again."

"Why stop at a cowherd? Why not become a cow? You would have made an excellent cow. It would definitely be a more peaceful life. Just picture yourself with a bell around your neck, on all fours, eating grass and occasionally raising your head to moo sadly at another cow's behind..."

Now they both laughed. Then Javert grew serious.

"Don't think you are stupid for not seeing through me. These little subterfuges are all-pervasive in all matters of government business. Government clerks conceal things, policemen conceal things, prosecutors, well, prosecutors are in a league of their own. It all depends on one's intent. A clerk who is out to make a fortune and ascend to a Ministry lies and cheats to pave his way up in the world. A prosecutor lies and cheats to obtain a confession from the detained suspect. And I occasionally – I won't say 'lie,' but I do sometimes play pretend in the name of the law and justice. This is not a paradox, though in an ideal world, it would be. My first love is always the Code."

"You are still the Emperor's man, then?"

"No. I am the man of the law."

"But the Code is Napoleon's."

"No, the Code is the world's."

"I don't understand you."

"That's fine. I often don't understand myself."

"So you are not a Bonapartist? Isn't that why you had been in conflict with Delavau?"

"I had been in conflict with Delavau because Delavau was a scoundrel. The Code does not care who is in charge of the police: a Bonapartist, an Orleanist, a Legitimist, a red Republican, or a devil with a forked tail. These men, they come and go from the Prefecture, shoving each other in their rush to the warm seat. Did you know that Paris changed its Prefect of the Police eight times in the last two years? Eight times! Imagine if I tried to keep up with all their political likes and dislikes! I'd be twirling round and round without stop, like a weathercock in a storm. What was duty one day would be taboo the next."

"I'll give you a concrete example," he continued. "Say that one Prefect issues to me and the rest of the police fellows - the inspectors, the Security Brigade, the Morals police, everyone - standing orders to disband all gatherings of sodomites at Quai de l'Ecole and Champs Elysees. Two months later, an administration change brings in a new Prefect, who wants us instead to present a friendly and socialble front to the sods and protect them against potential assault. Has some fundamental truth about the acceptability of men promenading publically with other men changed? No. Has the law with respect to such gatherings been altered? It has not. The only things that changed were the personal tastes and political opinions of the head of the police in the city. And I cannot even use my assessment of their character to guide me in whether or not to obey their directives. An upright man might sometimes command something immoral; a scoundrel might sometimes issue an order that is not without merit. Gisquet is generally a decent fellow, but were I to have obeyed his orders the night of the uprising, you would have been without a son-in-law today - not because he had been tried, found guilty of treason and his life was forfeit under the law, but because there was a mass slaughter in the streets, completely out of all bounds of civil society. And Delavau, whom I detested heartily and to whom I was an embarassment on many fronts, was privately rather more tolerant of unrepentant sodomites like myself than the bourgeoisie at large - though he had few scruples about potentially using someone's _petit defaut_ against them politically. Most policemen never question what they are asked to do. I have but one litmus test: will executing the order I am given land me in conflict with the law? If so, I cannot in good conscience comply. I am not in service to the state to protect the loves and hatreds of its ever-changing functionaries. I am in service to protect the law."

"And thus one finds that to serve the law, one must often disobey one's superiors. I cannot fault myself for this. They can fault me, if they want – turn me out, perhaps; demote me, maybe – if I were not already so near the bottom of the government heap. But so far it's been working out for me. I have grown very adept at lying in the name of truth. And for the salary I draw, I make myself very useful."

Javert rose.

"Like right now, for instance. Let us make ourselves useful."

"How? We are locked in."

Javert grinned a slow-growing, frightening grin.

* * *

"Hey there!"

Valjean knocked harder and waited. There was a noise from without, and then a slurred voice asked:

"Whossere?"

"It is I, Jean-the-Jack. I need a favor."

"What it is?"

"I need you to come down and tie me up."

"What?" said the voice after a pause, sounding slightly more sober.

"I said, come down and tie me up!"

"Why do you want that?"

"Because I'm frightened."

"What?"

"Frightened, I'm frightened!"

Speaking with a drunk man through the keyhole of the massive oak door was proving more difficult than Valjean anticipated. Next to him, Javert bared his teeth in frustration as he struggled to hear.

"So what do I care?"

"I'm a religious man, you know," said Valjean.

"You're a ninny."

"There's a nail sticking out of the wall."

"What nail?"

"A big, rusty nail. With a sharp edge. I could get wrench it out of the wall if I chose."

"What for?"

"To open my veins with."

"Hey now!"

"Come tie me up so that I'm not tempted."

"You can't off yourself before you tell us about your money, Mr. Threadbare-Millionaire!"

"I haven't got any money. It's all gone."

"I don't believe you."

"That's why I need you to come down and tie me up. I have no money anymore. You don't believe me; you will torture me for it. But I'd rather be tortured for a short while on earth than be tortured forever in Hell."

"So don't go to Hell."

"I don't want to. But I'm weak in spirit. The nail tempts me. I'm afraid of pain."

"You? afraid of pain? You burned a hole in your arm with a red-hot poker to show off to us!"

Javert seized Valjean by the left arm, pulled up the sleeve of his worker's blouse and, like Thomas probing the flesh of the risen Savior, set his fingers against the scarred-over wound.

"And you didn't think to mention this to me when I laid out the plan?!" he hissed. "When we get out of here, I'll put another one on your other arm, for symmetry!"

Valjean scrambled for a response.

"I know I burned my arm. Something came over me. I was not in my right mind. It hurt badly afterwards. I was in a fever for weeks. It was miserable. I don't want to go through that again. I'm too old to handle it. And I have no daughter anymore to care for me in my convalescence. She has gottten married. Her husband is strict and won't let her see me. Come down and tie me up. Why did you tie him up but not me? That was unfair of you. I don't want to damn my soul to spare my body."

The men held their breath.

"All right," finally said the voice outside. "Wait. I'll get the rope."


	56. Ch 53

From his spot assumed well in the depths of the cellar, Valjean heard the lock jangle, then watched as the door was thrown open with a bang. A very tall, very drunk man with a huge unkempt beard stumbled through and began making his way down the slippery stairs, his right hand bracing himself against the wall and his left one holding a candle.

Behind him, the door closed noiselessly.

When Javert laid out the plan before Valjean earlier, he thought at first that it could never work. It was simply too vaudevillian. But now, as he watched Guelemer descend, he had to admit Javert had been right. When Guelemer threw open the door, he had concealed Javert from his own sight. And when he began cursing under his breath religious ninnies and slippery steps, he concealed Javert also from his own hearing.

The light of the candle flickered ominously on the faces of both the hunter and the hunted. For every step the man took down, Javert took one with him, like a shadow made flesh.

A coil of rope hung off Guelemer's right elbow. A coil of rope was clenched in Javert's right hand.

Everything in Valjean tightened in anticipation. His heart pounded. "Here I am!" he said hoarsely to Guelemer when the latter finally stepped onto the cellar floor. "Here! Come." And Valjean raised his hands, as if offering them to be tied together.

At that moment, Javert threw the rope around Guelemer's throat from behind. The candle fell to the ground and sputtered out.

* * *

Valjean had been in many fights in his life. Growing up in his village, most of the fleeting friendships he made almost invariably grew out of brawls during fairs or holidays, when young men wandered around soused to the gills and ready to accuse even their own reflection in a puddle of looking at them funny. Later, in Toulon, it became almost a matter of course for some new inmate to try and measure his strength against that of the famous Jean-the-Jack. As a consequence, Valjean learned relatively quickly the art of subduing an opponent without causing him too much irreparable harm.

Admittedly, he had never wrestled with anyone quite as large as Guelemer, but that was where Javert's rope came in handy. Once he had Guelemer on the floor and underneath him in a lock, Valjean had little to do but wait. Half a minute of wheezing and croaking, and Guelemer's body went slack, his eyes rolled into his head, and he was, so to say, "spitch-cocked."

Shortly after, Guelemer lay flat on his belly, with all his limbs tied together behind him and the knotted rope still tight around his throat.

"Good show," rasped Javert, who was sitting against the wall holding his stomach with one hand and pulling the rope taunt with the other. Guelemer had elbowed him hard in the gut and he was still catching his breath. "Very nice. It's always… always difficult to do anything against big guys. You don't want to break anything of theirs, but you don't want to die either. A problem. But you! you're one tough old bird..."

Rising to his feet with a grunt, Javert checked the tightness of the noose around Guelemer's throat by sticking a finger behind it, then re-lit the candle and set to searching him. First he pulled off Guelemer's shoes, shook them out, then flung them into the opposite cellar corner. Then he went through all his pockets in his cotton velvet waistcoat and duck trousers. One of them yielded a blackjack covered with soft leather, which he examined and took.

Next Javert picked up his wig, which he had flung to the floor prior to the grapple, unknotted and pulled off the kerchief from around his neck, and wrapped it a few times around the crumpled wig. Then he sat down on the floor by Guelemer's head, crossing his legs like a tailor.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready," replied Valjean.

"On the count of three. One… two… three!"

Valjean carefully loosened the knot around Guelemer's neck. At the same time, Javert opened the man's mouth, stuffed the gag into it, then tied the ends of the kerchief around Guelemer's face. Several seconds later, Guelemer's eyes opened a slit - then wider, then wider still when they saw Javert smiling down at him.

"Hello, old pal," said Javert, watching Guelemer struggle furiously against his bonds and gag with terror in his eyes. "Nice to see you in good health and still bucking like a mustang. Still as stupid as ever, though." Javert showed Guelemer the blackjack. "If you're going to go in somewhere armed, best to hold the weapon ready right away. Otherwise, it's at best useless to you and at worst, it's the other fellow's weapon. Say, does Montparnasse know you've nicked his favorite blackjack? Nod yes or no."

Guelemer was still growling audibly behind his gag. His face was quickly filling up with blood. Valjean half feared the man would have an apoplectic attack right there on the spot, and all their efforts at a bloodless take-down would have been for naught.

"What, you don't want to answer? Fine, remain uncooperative. That's how I'll write it down later in my report: 'Tah tuh tuh tuh, and Sieur Guelemer remained throughout un – co – o – perative.'" Javert mimed writing for a while, then stopped. "Sure you don't want to tell me anything?"

Guelemer jerked violently against his bonds and inadvertently hit his head on the crate Javert had moved close to him.

"Well, I guess we're done then. What do you think, Jack? Is he tied well?"

"As long as I've spent working on ships, he better be," said Valjean, casting a satisfied eye at his own rope work.

"Fantastic." Javert got up and, to Valjean's surprise, moved another crate over to tower over Guelemer's head, then a third one next to it. Now Guelemer's head was walled-in from three sides, and his body stuck out from between the three crates like the stem of a gigantic clover.

"What's that for?" asked Valjean.

Javert shrugged. "A little extra touch of disorientation."

Valjean walked up the steps and put an ear to the door. Everything was quiet.

"I don't think anyone heard us," he said.

"Or perhaps they heard us quite well and are sitting there with their guns pointed at the door, waiting to see who comes out, if anyone." Javert kicked the wall lightly. "Although the walls of this place are something to be marveled at. The stone doesn't even reflect back echoes. A perfect dungeon."

"I'm going out," said Valjean. "I don't think there's anyone there." He pulled the massive key out of the lock and cracked open the door.

"What are you doing, you tree-stump!" hissed Javert. "Come back down this instant!"

But Valjean was already out of the cellar and closing the door behind him.

The tavern was empty, save for Barre-Carosse. He was sitting at the table and staring into a soup plate. Three empty bottles stood before him; two more could be seen under the table.

"G'emer?.." he mumbled, raising his bloodshot eyes to Valjean.

"Afraid not," said Valjean.

A movement outside the window caught his eye but it was too late. The door opened and a small, diaphanous man walked in holding a gun. A newspaper was rolled up under his right arm.

"Oh, we have guests!" he said, sounding mildly pleased.

Behind him, Valjean saw a slightly taller figure swathed in bandages and a young fashionably dressed man with black curls. Both looked familiar, though Valjean could not shake a feeling that this was the first time he was seeing them together.


	57. Ch 54

"Take a seat wherever, good sir," said the small man. "But quickly."

The bandaged figure and the curly young man came in as well and stood on either side of the small man. Together, they looked picturesque enough to suggest a grotesque and comical allegory: the evolution of a wicked man into an Egyptian mummy.

Valjean sat down to the table closest to the cellar door, carefully extended a leg underneath, in case the table needed to be tipped over forward, and put a fist on the table.

"I don't believe my eyes," said the smaller man after a pause. "It is our rich bourgeois grandfather from the Gorbeau place. No mistaking you. White as a chicken on top. Good to see that monster of a female didn't pluck out all your feathers."

"As I've said during our previous meeting to your friend Fabantou or Jondrette or whoever he was, I am neither rich, nor bourgeois. Nor am I a grandfather. So you are mistaken on all three counts."

"One hears this a lot these days," sighed the man. "The rich part, I mean. One would think there is no industry or agriculture left in poor old France. No one has any coin to spare!"

"Oh, I have a coin all right," said Valjean. "If I may be permitted to reach into my pocket?.."

The man gestured indulgently with the pistol. Valjean made a show of going through his pockets and frowned.

"Now that's odd," he said. "I'm clean." He looked pointedly at Barre-Carosse. "Everything was in place when I got here. Your pal here must've patted me down. Tell him to restore my property."

The man laughed a little. "Come, Barre-Carosse, _aboule la carle_."*

But Barre-Carosse was far too far into his cups to follow directions – his murky gaze did not even flicker to the small man at the sound of his name. It was the figure in bandages that came up to Barre-Carosse and stuck its hand unceremoniously into his pocket, pulling out a handful of change.

"'Ere's G'emer?" suddenly said Barre-Carosse, addressing the ransacker of his pockets.

"Down in the _profonde_," answered Valjean. "He wanted to get something in one of the boxes."

Barre-Carosse staggered to the cellar door, opened it and disappeared inside. Valjean pushed the door closed with his foot.

"Smells foul down there," he complained.

"Well?" asked the small man of the bandaged figure.

The man jingled the coins, shrugged and mumbled: "What can be had from what is here? A mutton leg and a mug of beer."

"There should be a sou coin in there," said Valjean.

"You wish to gift me with a sou coin?" asked the small man with a cold smile.

"Gift you? By no means. I expect to have it back when you're done looking."

The handsome young man raised an elegant eyebrow. The figure in bandages laughed out loud - a strangely carefree laugh, as though he were a student savoring a friend's quip in a café. Picking the large sou coin out of the handful, he tossed it to the small man and said:

"Here, Babet – go forth and deny yourself nothing."

Babet caught the coin, looked it over and shrugged as well. "It's a sou," he said. "An old one."

So you are Babet, thought Valjean. You were the other ring-leader in the Gorbeau house. Right, of course, Javert named you all. And the other fellow, who was he? Not the old man, not the long-haired man… What was your name?… it's on the tip of my tongue. How annoying. And was the pretty-boy there? Doesn't seem so…

"Look closer," said Valjean. "Turn it in two directions, like a pomade box. It unscrews."

Babet turned the sou in his fingers, then again. With his third effort, the coin came apart, and something glinting fell out of it. Babet bent down to pick up the tidbit.

"It's a sawblade. Careful you don't lose or break it. I might need it again someday," said Valjean.

"Why, so it is! What a marvelous little construction," said Babet admiringly. "Your own, is it? Benvenuto Cellini would be proud. So that's how you got out of your binds in the Gorbeau place! How clever of you. I take it you are an old hand at the _pr__é_?"

"Twenty years. My first arrest was under the Directory."

"Escaped or released?"

"First one, then the other. Then the former again."

"What did they get you for?"

"Stealing a loaf of bread."

Now even the young man joined in the laughter.

"To feed a gaggle of crying ragamuffins, no doubt?" said Babet sardonically.

"Believe it or not, you're right."

"And how much did the, uhm, loaf cost you?" asked the man with the bandages. His voice was peculiar, as though he were speaking through layers and layers of wool.

"Five years. Nineteen with interest."

Babet shook his head and hid the sou in his pocket. "How dear bread is! Kings and governments come and go, but bread remains dear. No, there is no justice for the little man in this world. Metaphorically speaking," he added, sizing up Valjean, who was easily twice as broad as he.

"Where has Barre-Carosse disappeared off to?" asked the young man. The bandaged man shrugged.

"Check," he suggested laconically.

The young man opened the cellar door and called out: "Ey, Barre-Carosse, what's the hold up?"

Suddenly, he began backing up. A grimace of horror twisted his handsome face.

"A traffic jam on the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue de Bacq," a voice sounded from the cellar, accompanied by soft, sure footsteps. "All vehicles must now detour through Rue de Villeran. Barre-Carosse** was urgently needed in his professional capacity."

Javert appeared in the doorway, wiping off his hands with some straw. There were blood splatters on the cuffs of his shirtsleeves.

* * *

*Abouler la carle – cough up the dough

** Barre-Carosse – lit. 'stop-carriage', a barricade put in the middle of the street to signal a detour.


	58. Ch 55

There was a silence in the tavern, except for a faint jangling. The bandaged man was tossing the change in his hand into the air and catching it artfully. The change jingled.

And just like that, Valjean remembered what he was called.

Smiling at everyone present, Javert closed the door and suddenly walloped the latch on it with his hand twice. The men jumped. The latch bent.

"There! this ought to keep even more people from falling prey to that cellar," he said, placing a rectangular stone on the table by Valjean's fist. "A dangerous place, that cellar. Eats people right up."

"Are you hurt?" asked Valjean quietly.

"Not I. This is all from Barre-Carosse's nose. He was fixing to scream."

The young man had meanwhile whipped out his knife and was holding it out point first in the direction of the two men, as if expecting them to leap upon him. The point quivered in the air.

Babet concealed his shock better.

"Ah, Inspector Javert," he said through his teeth. "Proving once again the old maxim that turds do not sink. How did you find us?"

"It was Landot!" exclaimed the young man, blinking. Pomade mixed with nervous sweat was running down his forehead and into his eyes. "Landot brought the _raille_ here!"

"Indeed," said Javert. "This is why it's a bad idea to build your business relationships on fear, Monsieur Montparnasse. No matter how scary you are, there is always someone your comrade finds scarier than you. Myself, for instance. And then your power over them is undermined."

Montparnasse ignored him. "You!" The point of the knife swiveled towards Valjean. "I remember you now, Mister Jean-the-Jack, Mister _Grand Fanandel_! You are that old fart that lectured me out in the fields by Austerlitz!"

Javert looked at Valjean quizzically. "What's this now?"

"This young man tried to rob me when I was out for a stroll one day," said Valjean. "He declared to me that he wanted to be a thief. I tried to dissuade him."

"Why not tell the whole truth, old man? You gave me a long boring sermon about why thieving was naughty, and then you went and _stole the purse from my pocket!_"

Javert burst out laughing. "You didn't!" There was admiration in his voice. "Did you?"

"Of course I didn't!" protested Valjean. "I was the one who _gave_ him that purse to begin with. He must've lost it."

"Loo-ooost it," drawled Montparnasse. "Rii-iiight. Here's a purse, put it into your pocket, sonny, now watch the magician walk away, and presto! No purse! I broke my brains trying to figure out that trick."

"It's disquieting how tricky police spies are becoming these days." There was banked fury in Babet's voice. "I think you better sit down beside your friend, Inspector Javert." He gestured with the pistol in his hand. "Claquesous, search them."

The man in bandages tucked his own pistol behind the back of his belt, stepped up the bench and began patting down Javert.

"Your health, Claquesous," said Javert to him. "How's that abscess? Have you tried a peeled potato slice on it? Works a treat."

Claquesous said nothing and moved on to Valjean, in whose pockets he discovered the toy pistol.

"A little toy for the little boy," he mumbled and tossed the pistol to Montparnasse. Montparnasse caught it and cocked it, saying: "Oh, heavy artillery, that!"

And he aimed it playfully at Javert's head.

"Oh, come now, don't fire," Javert told him with a smile. "Your shot will miss fire."

"Go on! Do you really think you could pull that trick off twice?" said Babet, whose pistol was also aimed at Javert's head.

"Let him fire, and we'll see," said Javert, staring into Montparnasse's eyes the while.

"What are you two talking about?" asked Montparnasse.

Babet shook his head slowly. "Nothing." But he looked unsure. "He couldn't get that lucky again."

"So tell the boy to fire," said Javert.

"Why ask him? He's not my master. Good-bye, Inspector!" said Montparnasse and fired. The pistol clicked but produced nothing – not even a flame.

Javert turned to Valjean and said: "See? I told you that thing was a piece of junk."

"Impossible!" moaned Babet.

"Didn't you listen to what Bigrenaille said at the Gorbeau place?" asked Javert. "I am the emperor of fiends." To Montparnasse, he added: "I hope we're not boring you with our reminiscences. It's a pity you weren't there that day. Everyone had such fun."

Montparnasse shrugged and tossed the pistol aside. "What the gun couldn't start, the blade will finish."

"We've done that before, too, haven't we?" remarked Valjean. "I don't recall you faring very well."

"What do you hope to accomplish, Inspector?" asked Babet. "You are alone here. I still have two bullets left, and Claquesous as well. Montparnasse has his _dague_. You have your hearty grandpa, that is true. Let's reckon him for two. Your odds are still no good. You can't effect an arrest on us this way."

"Actually, you are overlooking something," said Javert. "It's three against two, you are right - except the other way around. Or have you forgotten that one of you is a police spy?"

Babet's gun shifted to Montparnasse, then to Claquesous. Montparnasse's knife described an uncertain arc in the air. Claquesous produced a pistol out of his pocket as well, - the same kind as Babet's.

Javert stretched out his legs.

"While the three of you are standing there figuring things out, may I ask you something, Babet?"

Babet said nothing but shifted his pistol back to Javert.

"This tavern - did you acquire it by _airing _any of your fresh _shiners_?"*

"Are you playing charades now?" asked Babet.

"Oh, drop the act," said Javert. "I know it was you who did the widow Leon in."

At once, both Claquesous' pistol and Montparnasse's knife-blade pointed in Babet's direction.

"What is he talking about, Babet?" growled Montparnasse. "It wasn't you, was it? Swear that it wasn't you!"

"I swear on my children it wasn't me!"

"Answer me also this," asked Javert. "How much does a quarter of an ounce of gold cost? You know, to use for false teeth?" asked Javert.

"I'm afraid my days of dentistry are long past," said Babet. "I am no longer in practice."

"Come, Babet, you know this one. A quarter of an apothecary's ounce of gold. In the light of your haul, practically nothing. Three hundred thousand already in your pocket, but you couldn't hold back, could you? The poor old woman was lying on the floor in a puddle of warm blood, and you decided to be diligent. So you turned her over onto her back and pulled out her gold teeth."

"Traitor!"

"Fiend!"

Two cries that would no longer be held in, from Montparnasse and Claquesous respectively.

"I think this ought to close matters," said Babet and cocked his gun. "The priming powder is good. I loaded it myself. Had I known whom I would be facing, I would have had it blessed by a priest, but even so, it should not fail."

Javert glanced at Claquesous, then at Montparnasse, who was quivering with rage. Slowly, with a small groan of effort, he got up from the bench and walked up to Babet so that the barrel of the gun was flush against his chest.

Valjean felt his insides congeal. His ears rang with the pounding of blood. He wanted desperately to leap up, to overturn the table, tackle Babet, seize the gun barrel - anything but sit there and be forced to watch. Yet he remained where he sat, stiff, frozen - impotent. There was no outrunning a point-blank shot. One could not tackle a bullet.

"Don't do it, Babet!" he uttered, his tongue moving thickly in his mouth.

"Do it, Babet," said Javert simply.

"Monsieur, please..." moaned Valjean. His heart felt as though it was about to tear in half. "Anything you want! Everything I have, it's all yours! Don't..."

A deafening shot rang out.

Javert did not budge.

Babet lowered his shaking gun hand. Javert stood tall in the acrid cloud of smoke, his vest and shirtsleeves smudged by the powder. There was no blood, and no wound.

A scream to shame a banshee tore out of Babet's throat. Flinging the gun to the floor, the man ran out of the shack as fast as his legs would carry him.

At that very instance, Montparnasse leaped upon Javert but found his arms fixed fast behind his back. It was Valjean.

"Looks like you're on your own now, child," said Javert to the young man. "Now, you can either drop the knife and be a good boy, or we can do this the hard way. It would be better for you if you disarmed yourself voluntarily."

Montparnasse jerked in response, but Valjean held him fast enough to bruise. All the while, his eyes remained locked with Javert's over the boy's shoulder, flashing with triumph and fury, elation and reproach - he could make no sense of it himself. His entire being was in turmoil. Had they been alone, he did not know whether he would have shaken Javert like a rag doll or crushed him in an embrace.

Javert held his burning gaze for a few seconds, as if extending a mute apology. Then he pulled out of his pocket the small flagon of thick glass. Clear liquid sloshed inside.

"You know what this is?" he asked, showing the flagon to Montparnasse. "This is vitriol. Do you know what happens to human skin when vitriol is poured on it?"

Montparnasse was silent.

"Shall I drip a little onto your lovely face?" suggested Javert sweetly.

The knife clattered to the floor.

"Good boy. Is this all of them?" asked Javert.

"All of them," echoed Claquesous, who had been standing there so still and quiet that Valjean had lost sight of him.

"Then I guess we're done here."

"I guess we're done," echoed Claquesous.

"So go give the signal already." Javert's voice was different now, softer.

Picking up a ceramic plate from the table, Claquesous stepped over the threshold of the tavern. Cocking his pistol, he threw the plate into the air and fired at it.

The plate shattered midair.

* * *

* Airing = spending; shiners = gold pieces


	59. Ch 56

Within the blink of an eye, the tavern filled up with men carrying lanterns, sabers, and handcuffs. Montparnasse was seized by two soldiers, cuffed and forced down to sit against the wall. Another soldier placed Babet next to him, also in cuffs. Montparnasse's face was flushed; Babet, on the contrary, was so pale as to look almost green in the lantern light. His head drooped on his chest; he made the impression of a man about to lose consciousness.

"Two more downstairs, Louis," said Javert to a tall young inspector who bore between the eyebrows of his handsome face a stamp of permanent discontent similar to Javert's own. "The latch might need to come off the door. I was a little violent with it."

"Wonder of wonders – you, violent!" said Vidocq's voice behind them. "Go sit down already."

Javert sat down on a bench behind the table, on the very spot Valjean was rooted to in horror just minutes prior. Stiff-legged and still reeling, Valjean sat down heavily beside him, and they watched Vidocq argue with the inspector about the best way to open the door.

"They should do it with an axe," muttered Valjean.

"And supposing they might want the lock to remain intact?" asked Javert in a low voice. He had barely moved away to give Valjean any space, and they now sat almost flush against each other. The warmth made Valjean's head swim.

"I meant, they can try to straighten the latch with the butt of the axe, from underneath."

"What in heavens' name did you do to it?" asked Vidocq, feeling the curve of the metal with his finger.

"Here." Javert reached forward and pushed the stone across the table with his fingers. "Try using this. What was good for bending ought to be good for unbending as well."

"Where is your brother?" whispered Valjean. The bandaged man was not visible among the crowd.

"Probably outside smoking," replied Javert. "First smoke he could have in ages – the real Claquesous never touched tobacco. It's been two months almost since we made the switch."

The young inspector made an impatient sign for Vidocq to step aside began hammering the latch with the stone from underneath. Vidocq came over to their bench, standing at Javert's other side to watch the process.

"As you can see, I ran into your favorite in the Prefecture," he said with a smirk. "He was pacing the hallways like a dog on a short chain. I decided to invite him and his insomnia along."

The inspector stood up, unbuttoned his coat and placed it on the table, casting a disapproving glance at the three figures watching him from the other side of it. Valjean thought he saw a bit of color bloom high on his cheeks and scowled back.

"You went to alert Allard?" ask Javert.

"Had to, didn't I?" Vidocq shrugged. "He's the big man now. He'll be here to pick everyone up soon."

"So you and Canler rode here together? Are you actually starting to get on?"

"Like oil and water. The silly pup can hardly contain his righteous sneer in my presence. Though mind you, he is more than willing to follow me when I'm heading out for an operation."

"He'll mature. Give him time."

By the by, the latch was unbent, and gloomy young Canler motioned for three soldiers to accompany him down into the basement.

"I'm inclinced to write him off as hopeless, at least in this aspect," said Vidocq. "For all their chumminess, he's fundamentally nothing like Allard."

Javert stretched voluptuously, wrinkling his nose and extending his legs under the table and his arms over his head.

"Our commissaire Allard," he told Valjean dreamily, "is like the fabled Japanese gigantic squid _ika_, of which it is said in the Book of Waters: 'He contains ink and knows decorum.' Allard also contains vast quantities of ink and knows decorum. Canler, on the other hand, contains no ink. That is not so bad. But he also knows no decorum. That is much worse."

"Canler contains only bile," said Vidocq. "'Once a thief, always a thief,' and so on. Canler the unbendable; Canler the implacable. Thence, Canler the deaf, and thence, Canler the perpetually under-informed. All law-breakers and otherwise immoral persons are sub-human to him and quite beneath his attention. He chases malefactors out of an ingrained spite, like a dog chasing rats. He has yet to learn that this instinct alone is not enough to make a detective. No witness or accused man will open up to him if he doesn't learn how to at least affect civility if not warmheartedness. And in our line of work, if you can't get people to talk to you, you're stuck with nothing but conjectures."

"Come, that is not true," said Javert. "There remains physical evidence." Peeved that his leggy bright-eyed pet is being slandered, thought Valjean bitterly. Of course.

"No amount of physical evidence will help you find a man who doesn't want to be found. It will only help tell you if he's the right man once you have him. A trace in the mud, a clump of hair, a finger-smudge - these are no good on their own. Working with witnesses, that's the true art of policing."

"I promise, he will be a nice fellow yet," promised Javert. "Or at least he'll learn to fake it, like I did." He gave Valjean a small playful shove with his shoulder, and Valjean felt a slight tremor go through him. The stresses of the day must have been taking their toll.

"Take him along on sod patrols," smirked Vidocq. "Let him have a whiff of the odd perfume."

"Are you joking? The boy all-but growls when he sights a _persilleuse_. It's hard to contain laughter sometimes."

"That's why you ought to take him more, as palliative."

"You've been taking him 'round ex-convict haunts – has he improved any around them?"

"No more than marginally. As soon as he sets foot in a _tapis franc_, he boils over with desire to arrest absolutely everyone in it right away, out of principle. He doesn't even need to say anything - he emanates unwelcoming fluids."

They both laughed a little. Javert shook his head.

"He worries me, that boy," he told Valjean, as if in confidence. "I see so much of myself in him. When he joined up, it was something of a revelation: is this what I looked like to the world? And yet I know his heart is in the right place - or mostly in the right place. I am older and wiser now, so I try to prod him in the right direction. I guess there is something of an unfulfilled father in me as well."

He smiled shyly at Valjean, who swallowed against a lump in his throat and smiled back.

The soldiers came back up leading Guelemer, who was proceeding slowly and in very small steps on account of his legs being tied together. After them, the unbendable and implacable Canler came up, wearing an even deeper frown and dragging by the collar the gagged and blood-splattered body of Barre-Carosse, whose bruised eyes were rolled into his head.

"Mind you don't bang him about too hard," said Javert. "This specimen has my snuffbox in one of his pockets."

He arose and paced along the wall, reviewing the four ruffians who were lined up seated against it.

"Well!" he said. "It's back to the Conciergerie for you lot. And this time you fellows won't be getting the posh rooms near the chimney, that's for sure."

He stopped in front of Montparnasse, who regarded him with fury, and pulled the little flagon out of his pocket.

"Fancy a drink?" he asked the boy.

Montparnasse bared his teeth. "You wouldn't dare to, with everyone watching."

"Dare to what? Dare to offer an arrested person some refreshment?" Javert shrugged. "Suit yourself. More for me. How about the rest of you? Also no? Fine."

He uncapped the flagon and, under everyone's eyes, tipped it into his own mouth. The soldiers behind him laughed. Montparnasse goggled.

"Drinking on the job, Javert?" sounded a voice in the doorway. It belonged to a gentleman of about forty, dressed in a long cape and flanked by two adjutants.

Javert choked. The gentleman clapped him solicitously on his back.

"All right?" he asked, smiling. His voice was gentle but resonant enough to carry over the din.

Javert wheezed something to him between coughs, to the further laughter of the soldiers around him.

"Yes, I recall one such occasion, when I was a young man," said the gentleman. "My apologies for startling you. Are these all ours?"

Javert nodded.

"And what of the report? Will you all reconvene for it tomorrow?"

Javert grimaced and said something to him in a low voice.

"If you are in shape to do it, by all means, proceed. Otherwise, nothing stops you from going off duty for a good night's sleep."

Javert said something else and gestured with the hand holding the flagon towards the table where Valjean and Vidocq sat.

"Then I will await the reports. Unless you want to make the delivery to the Prefecture yourself?"

Javert shook his head and asked something else.

"Naturally. I will leave the men from your squad here, then. All right, everyone, let's clear out. Monsieur Vidocq." The man inclined his head in acknowledgement towards the table. Vidocq grunted something in response, but did not get up. "Monsieur Canler, if you please," said the gentleman and exited.

While the unbendable young Canler shepherded everyone out of the tavern, Javert made his way through the crowd to the table, where one of the gentleman's adjutants had deposited an ink well, some pens, a small sandbox and a stack of paper.

"What was that about?" asked Valjean.

"Monsieur Allard has deigned to lend assistance to our outfit and take over the operation, now that it has reached a safe conclusion," sighed Vidocq. "It should have been you, you know," he said to Javert.

"I am not up for playing Scheherezade with Gisquet right now," said Javert, sinking his fingers into the sandbox and taking a pinch from it. "Allard is doing me a favor by this."

"This could be your last opportunity to really shine before Gisquet. After Allard takes over officially, he might not be as inclined to give you ready audience."

"Oh, go on. Is this the first day we've known each other? I'm not in this business to shine before anyone. The less time I spend around magistrates, the better." Javert sniffed the air. "Do you think it would be considered low and unsporting of me to eat the fellows' dinner after having arrested them?"

"Well, seeing as the place is now under temporary police custody," – Vidocq nodded towards the group of inspectors standing in a circle outside by the tavern's doors – "one could consider it a form of justified appropriation for inquiry purposes."

Javert nodded. "Then I am definitely in the mood to appropriate some stew. But not before we search the cellar."

"I'll come with you." Vidocq rose from the table.

"What did you ask Allard after he made you cough?" asked Valjean.

"Nothing important," shrugged Javert. "Procedural chit-chat."

"So why did everyone laugh?"

"Oh, that." Javert set the empty flagon he was holding onto the table. "I asked Allard if he'd ever had vodka go up his nose."


	60. Ch 57

Vidocq and Javert lit several candles and disappeared into the cellar, propping it halfway open behind them. Within seconds, their voices were muffled and then swallowed up entirely by the stone walls. Two of Javert's inspectors followed them; the other two remained as they were, standing outside at both sides of the tavern doorway, upright and immobile. None of them had spoken a word since they arrived.

'Is this because of a special sort of schooling, or are they mutes?' wondered Valjean as he washed and stacked three plates and sets of silverware by the stew pot. 'Then again, what good was a squad of mute inspectors? They couldn't even call out to each other for assistance… No, I'm thinking nonsense.'

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and paused with the ladle above the stewpot. It was the bandaged man, slipping inside between the two immobile inspectors like a specter gliding between two statues.

"Come have something to eat," invited Valjean, trying to sound as sincere in his welcome as possible. "Your brother and Monsieur Vidocq are downstairs. They'll be back soon."

Valjean's invitation had a paradoxical effect: the man froze in place, as though hoping that this would make him invisible to Valjean.

"I'm a friend of your brother's," said Valjean, trying to think of what could be keeping the fearless double agent at such a distance from him. "My name is Valjean. I was about to eat. There is stew and bread here. Will you have some?"

There was no answer. Although it was hard to tell with the bandages and the hat in the way, Valjean got the feeling that he was being intently examined.

Trying to move smoothly and non-threateningly, Valjean ladled out two plates and put two pieces of white bread over them. The man did not move to take one, so Valjean brought them both out to the table and sat down. When he looked up in the next second, he was astonished to see the man seated right across from him. Clearly, Javert's talent for silent locomotion ran in the family.

"So you are Javert's brother?" asked Valjean, taking up a fork and a piece of bread. "I had no idea Javert had siblings."

The bandaged man remained as still as a tailor's dummy. He smelled intensely of tobacco.

"Would you like to say grace?" offered Valjean uncertainly.

The man pitched forward slightly, as if to get a closer look into Valjean's eyes.

Exasperated by the strange pantomime, Valjean muttered a quick prayer under his nose and sank his teeth into the bread.

It was as though a lever had been pulled releasing some secret mechanism: the bandaged man sagged slightly in his chair, casually brought his right elbow up onto the table and grabbed his fork with a slight exhalation.

"So you are Javert's friend?" said the man in a pleasant baritone and pulled down the bandages that covered his mouth. A broad swath of linen remained covering his nose, which made him look somewhat like a leper. "I had no idea Javert had friends."

"I suppose I'm not exactly a friend," said Valjean. "More of a really old adversary."

"Ah. You are a man he had had arrested."

"You are right," said Valjean, astonished and not a little embarrassed. "How did you know?"

"Because Javert has no other kind of friends," said the man in the bored tone of absolute assurance.

Given by the man's own brother as a thing entirely understood, this pronouncement struck Valjean as profoundly sad. And to that sadness, something else was also admixed, though Valjean did not yet have the capacity to detect it in himself: an incipient twinge of jealousy.

"And does he have many of those?" he asked.

"Of whom?"

"Men whom he arrests and who become his friends thereafter?"

"Some," said the man laconically.

"Has he no close friends among the police?"

"He has no close friends among anyone."

"How come?"

"It's simple," explained the man. "What do friends do together? They drink. And when they drink, what do they talk about? Love troubles, women troubles. Sacha has neither. _Ergo_, no friends."

Valjean chewed on that along with his stew.

"Vidocq is his friend," he said finally.

"Vidocq is his master," said the man.

"Not any longer. Brigade de Sûreté is being fused into the detective corps of the police proper. Vidocq is out."

The man paused with his mouth full. "He ith?"

"Within a matter of months, yes."

The man shrugged. "Well, so what. He's still Sacha's master. He'll just be his master from elsewhere."

"Javert's given name is Sacha?"

"Yes. Alexandre."

"Ah, he is called Sacha because he was in the Russian campaign," guessed Valjean.

The man gave him a peculiar look and nodded. "It is sensible."

It was unclear whether he referred to the appellation or Valjean's reasoning.

They remained then in silence that was neither friendly nor tense, but somehow expectant. Neither said a word. The men in the cellar were rendered silent by the stone walls; the men outside, by some convention Valjean had no knowledge of. All one could hear were spoons scraping against the plates.

Valjean finished his portion and rose to get seconds. Immediately, a second empty plate was presented to him. A little smile accompanied it, and a glimmer in the eyes, still shadowed by the brim of the hat, accompanied the smile.

"Why don't you take off your hat?" offered Valjean, taking the man's plate to the stove. "You don't have to conceal your face from anyone here."

"To be honest, I've quite forgotten I had it on," said the man with a sad little laugh.

When Valjean came back to the table with two refilled plates, the hat and the bandages were gone. The man sat with his face in his right hand and looked towards the cellar door. Hearing Valjean come back, he turned around to face him.

_Nomen _was, on this occasion, _omen_. Moineau had brown hair, brown eyes, an unremarkable nose and a regular mouth. No feature stood out to dominate the rest. The overall impression from him was quite agreeable but rather forgettable, like a pleasant taste that did not linger in the mouth.

He bore not the slightest resemblance to Javert. And yet his face seemed familiar to Valjean.

"How strange!" muttered the old man, baffled. "You resemble less Javert's brother than my own sister."


	61. Ch 58

"I've heard this before," smiled the young man. "It appears that I'm a specimen of Everyman. Everyone recognizes someone else in me. It comes in rather handy in my profession." He tucked heartily into his new portion.

"I can't say I recognize Javert in you."

"We have only our father in common. Javert tells me he did not resemble his father much, and I know I don't resemble mine. Things that are not equal to the same are not equal to each other."

There was a burst of sudden laughter from the cellar. Valjean saw that one of the inspectors had come up and was holding it open. Seconds later, Javert emerged, holding a strangely shaped bag. He was followed by Vidocq, who had been the one laughing.

"Hullo, boy!" said Vidocq and gave Moineau a bear hug from behind, almost choking him with the excess of goodwill. The man made a growling noise into his food.

"Don't disturb him while he's eating. He bites," said Javert.

He placed the brown leather bag on the table. It was rather long and slender, with its sides bearing several pale vertical traces. Its narrow opening had been crudely cropped and a length of draw-string had been rouhly sewn around the edges to hold it shut.

"Behold! the fruit of today's exertions," said Javert.

"Put it away for now," suggested Vidocq. "Sit down and eat first."

Javert took the bag off the table, set it down against a table leg and sat down. "And what about you - will you be joining us in the repast, Monsieur Vidocq, or is your refined palate shrinking back from this rustic cookery?"

Moineau snorted into his stew, and even the two stone-faced inspectors cracked short-lived smiles.

"Don't tell me that rumormonger has gotten to you with this nonsense, too," grumbled Vidocq as he smelled the stew pot. "When I catch the author of that feuilleton piece, I will pull his ears off. You know I can eat even dog meat if I must."

"Well, I hear that one's tastes and appetites change in old age," shrugged Javert and ducked smartly to the side to avoid a half-hearted fist swung in his direction. "Not to mention one's abilities."

"You better worry about your own tastes and appetites, old fellow," said Vidocq as he filled a plate. "This is beef stew. Can you stomach eating your god?"

"What god?" asked Valjean, dumbstruck.

"It's not my god," said Javert, rolling his eyes. "But even if it were, - you manage to eat yours on the occasional Sunday, so why shouldn't I be able to?"

"He's a Hindoo, our Javert, you know," said Vidocq loudly, apparently for Valjean's benefit. "They worship cows, those Hindoos."

Javert leaned on his elbow and threw Valjean a look of that was both long-suffering and conspiratorial: look at what I must put up with!

"It was his Isaac that turned him Hindoo, years ago," continued Vidocq blithely, filling up a second plate. "He told him that clever men of science had figured out that Gypsies came from India, not Egypt. So now the simple creature thinks himself Hindoo instead of Egyptian. Although I'm not sure how being a Hindoo and worshipping a cow is better than being an Egyptian and worshipping a dog."

"Either one is better than being whatever you are and worshipping the golden calf," said Javert. "Don't listen to him, Valjean."

"Also, since he's found out he hailed from India, he started tagging along with me whenever I go to London," said Vidocq, setting the plates on the table.

"What for?" asked Valjean.

"To eat. There's good Indian food to be had in London."

"Good, perhaps not. But decent," said Javert. "Also, there's more of it every year. Twenty years ago, there was barely anything beyond some basic curries. You want a good business venture idea, 'Gene? Here is one, gratis: open a restaurant in Paris that serves Indian food."

"And engage you as a cook? Agreed. Let's do it. At least I'd pay you better than the Prefecture."

"This reminds me," said Javert, suddenly becoming serious. "I'm going to be fifty francs short on my coach allowance this month."

"Already? Didn't you only just get it?"

"I did, but I had borrowed against it. I overspent last month."

"By fifty francs? What, did you finally decide to start eating a second meal regularly?"

"I had unforeseen coach expenses."

"Fifty francs is two whole solid days' coach hire. Where did you go?"

"Nowhere. There was simply an unforeseen expense," repeated Javert.

"You are being secretive! Oh ho!"

Vidocq squinted, folded his hands before his head like an attentive priest and lowered his voice. "Confess: did you take some fine young man out for a ride in a pretty coupe?"

Javert said nothing and continued to chew.

"You old dog!" exclaimed Vidocq, his eyes going wide. "Well, there's a fine thing! Go on, tell! Was he very handsome?"

"I suppose so," said Javert pensively. "Yes, I rather think he was."

"Blond or brunet?"

"Brunet. Black hair. Curls."

"Ofcourse. You and your love of black curls... Well? where did the two of you go?"

"Nowhere special. A cafe overfull with people and noise. Then we parted for a while; then we met up again and rode around a little. He was absolutely horizontal by that point, so I had him driven back to his place."

"And?"

"And nothing. I'm telling you, by the end of the day's excitement, he was quite out of it. I took him home, handed him over to his domestics, went on an errand, and then went home."

"It's a strange story you're telling me," said Vidocq suspiciously. "When did all this happen?"

"So that's where you disappeared to afterwards!" exclaimed Valjean. "I couldn't make sense of what happened. You were by the door, and then you weren't! I waited and waited. Why didn't you say anything?"

Javert gave him a severe look.

"Wait one minute," asked Vidocq. "You were there with him? On a rendez-vous?"

"It wasn't a rendez-vous," said Valjean, meeting the severity in Javert's eyes with serenity in his own. "He helped me get a wounded man to his house the night when the barricade fell. A young man, nearly dead. Very handsome, with black curls. He paid for the cab on which we took the boy home. That's the story he is telling you. He had been at the barricade with us. When it was taken, he was wounded, and I took him down into the sewer from Rue de Chanvrerie through an opening in the street. When I came back up with him, I ran into Javert, who had a cab engaged. I asked him to help me get the boy home. He agreed, and the cab's cushions got spoilt with muck and blood. That's where those extra fifty francs went - to pay the coachman."

Vidocq shook his head. "You are hopeless," he told Javert. "And naturally, you won't be seeking reimbursement from the Prefecture?"

"The Prefecture is better off not knowing what I did with that money, don't you think?" said Javert reasonably. "Can't you just spot me? Put it on my tab if you must."

"Hold on," said Valjean. "Wait a minute. That was your own money?"

"Some of it was the Prefecture's money, some of it was my own. I had a coach stand by for six hours that night, on official business, and then you materialized with the boy, covered in all kinds of effluvia. So that night ate up a week's fiacre money instead of one day's."

"I wish you'd have told me – I'd have returned you the money instantly. We were at my house – why didn't you say anything? I would have brought you down the money!"

"I had other things on my mind. Remember, Inspector Javert was supposed to jump off a bridge that night. Monsieur Vidocq and I had already made up all the paperwork testifying to that. I still had to leave my resignation note at one of the stations, and make it long and rambling enough to mystify my superiors and encourage thoughts of derangement. My house arrest was scheduled to start within hours. As I did not anticipate having to actually go through it, I had bought no groceries or water. Thus when I left you in such a hurry, I was considerably preoccupied."

Vidocq leaned back in his chair, crossed his palms behind his head and said quietly but firmly:

"By the way, don't think you've gotten away with your little scheme. You and I will be having a chat about that yet." He threw a side glance at Moineau, who was still eating and appeared absorbed in the activity.

"Can't wait." Javert stabbed a beef cube with his fork sullenly.

"It's a pity I haven't got anything right now," said Valjean, searching his pockets. "I should have paid the coachman myself, of course, but I only had a few coins on me that day, and I gave them all to this one particularly nasty specimen of a scoundrel for opening the sewer gate for me."

"It's a fortunate specimen of a scoundrel that has a government key to the sewers," said Javert. "I would dearly love to know where the hell he got it from."

"How much did you give him?" wondered Vidocq.

"Not much," said Valjean. "A bit of change I had on me for the poor. Thirty or forty francs."

Vidocq looked at him with strange eyes.

"Thirty or forty francs!" he exclaimed. "'A bit of change'!" He turned to Javert: "How do you like that?"

"He's a regular Croesus, this fellow," said Javert. "I don't think he even comprehends what money is worth anymore. It came too easily to him. One patent for a new kind of bracelet clasp, and the money faucet is open. Liards, sous, _balles_, _jaunets_ - it's all nothing but change. He must only recognize _faffiots _as money. Copper, silver and gold can all go to the devil's grandmother - paper is where it's at for him."

"Yes, I am definitely starting to see your point about him being a strange one." Vidocq leaned in Valjean's direction. "Forty francs may be 'a bit of change' to you, monsieur millionaire, but it's almost two weeks' salary to him."

"None of that, please," sighed Javert, moving his empty plate to the edge of the table and picking up the leather bag from the floor. "The last thing I need is for his charity glands to become moistened. I will not have him drooling over me as though I were one of his deserving poor. And do let's finish this; I would like to get home in time to get a couple of hours of sleep before the sun rises. Moineau, take the plates away, would you?"

When the table was clear, Javert upended the bag smartly over it, like a casino croupier spreading a fan of cards before the players. Gold coins stack into fat rolls lined up on the table like soldiers on parade.

"Presto!" said Javert. "Even a millionaire like our Valjean can appreciate this sight. If this isn't the whole of Babet's haul from Widow Leon, it is still surely most of it."


	62. Ch 59

"Most, perhaps, but not all of it," said Vidocq, eyes roving over the rolls.

"Yes," said Javert, "this is not twenty-five thousand. But it's more than half that for certain."

Moineau scratched pensively behind his left ear with a long, dirty finger. "Where do you suppose the rest of it is?"

Javert threw a skeptical look around the tavern. "A few hundred might have gone into securing this joint from its previous owner. I wouldn't have given ten francs for it, personally, but it has that marvelous cellar, and Babet either wanted or needed it for some reason. And besides, no price truly bites when you have fifteen thousand napoleons in your pocket."

"Might there also be some more hiding spots inside?" asked Valjean. "Under the floor stones, for instance?"

"Unlikely," said Javert. "Recall that the cellar is already below the water-line of the river; at least in all but the driest time of the year. It is lucky we found ourselves in it now and not in March, or we would have likely been treading water."

"No, he might be onto something," said Vidocq thoughtfully. "What does gold care about water, after all?"

Javert shrugged. "Fine, take his side. I can pay some attention to the floor when I look the place over again in daylight. But if you ask me, the floor is not the place. After all, we're looking not just for twenty-five thousand in gold, but also a hundred and forty in banknotes. Not to mention the jewels. The rest of the gold is either spent, or it needs to be sought elsewhere. For instance, in Babet's other haunts," he said, making a special emphasis on the word 'other.'

"Or we ask him to barter with us," suggested Vidocq.

"Why do your thoughts go immediately to trade-offs? It is imperative that we exhaust all other avenues first. If we find the money ourselves, there will be nothing for him to barter with."

"All very true, but we still don't know where his other haunts are. Unless Moineau has something new for us?"

Vidocq inclined his head towards the young man and raised his eyebrows.

"Babet is not one for holding soirees," said Moineau with defensive sarcasm. "All our meetings were in neutral places. I did all I could."

"No one faults you," said Vidocq. "It's as I said: we simply don't know. So why not let Babet trade his life for the rest of the loot? The widow's heirs will insist on maximum restoration of property possible. And honestly, what do you care if he goes to _Abbaye de Monte-à-Regret*_ or is he rots away in Rochefort?"

"His kind does not rot," said Javert, rolling a fat stack of gold coins back and forth over the table with two fingers. "His kind toughens into leather and jerky. If he manages to quit Rochefort, we will never be able to take a bite out of him again."

"He will not quit Rochefort," promised Vidocq. "The air is too bad there. The miasmas will put him to sleep forever."

Javert raised his eyes to him. "No," he said and lowered them again to the gold under his fingertips.

"He raised a gun against you. You know it's only what he deserves."

"Not by your hand!" said Javert fiercely. "Nor by the hand of any of your accomplices! You are not a functionary of the state. You have no authority to send out such orders."

"What difference does it make whether I'm a functionary? A minute ago you regretted that Babet will live in Rochefort. Now you do not want him to die there. Where is the logic? He must do one or the other."

Valjean chose that moment to get up and head casually for the door. "Going to go breathe some fresh air," he said to no one in particular. Listening in on what sounded like a very old debate restarted for the hundredth time by the two old policemen felt too much like eavesdropping.

Moineau also rose and headed out with him. The two inspectors, still as motionless by the door as an English honor guard, let them out without a word.

"Why are they silent?" asked Valjean in a whisper as they walked towards the veranda.

"They are from Sacha's squad," said Moineau. "He hand-picks them from all recruits. It's a sort of informal school of policemen that he's organized."

"He teaches them not to speak?"

"Amongst other things. He puts a lot of stock in knowing how to be absolutely still and silent."

"How long will they stand there like that?"

"Until the Gendarmerie sends a pair of its own guards tomorrow morning to relieve them."

They sat down at the table under the trellis, trying not to listen in on the audible echoes of the angry conversation taking place indoors.

Valjean folded his hands behind his head and tilted his face up towards the sky to watch the stars. Across the table, Moineau did likewise, as though impelled by an ingrained habit of mimicry.

They sat in this manner, like mirror images, for a few minutes. And then all of a sudden, Valjean saw one of the stars – a bright red one, hanging lower than the rest - move slightly with the corner of his eye.

Eh heh, he thought. That's no star. Someone is watching us from the top of the hill and smoking.

Immediately, the light went out, as if the unseen entity heard his thoughts and hastened to extinguish the cigarette that gave away his location.

Too late, thought Valjean with a mixture of anger and glee. I know you're there.

"May I ask you something?" he said.

"Ask," answered Moineau laconically.

"What sort of a history is there between Javert and a fellow named Lacour?"

"Coco? Where do you know him from?"

"I don't. I mean, I didn't. He ambushed us a few hours ago and took Javert aside for a conversation. He looked angry when he returned but did not say why," said Valjean evasively, deciding not to disclose the embarassment he underwent as a consequence of that encounter.

"Angry?" repeated Moineau through a massive yawn. "That is interesting." He unhooked his hands from behind his head, folded his arms on the table, and put his chin down into them, fixing his eyes on Valjean. "There is a myriad reasons why Sacha could be angry at Coco. They quite hate each other. It might have even had something to do with me. I've spotted Coco around in the last couple of days in places where he shouldn't have shown himself. It was a good thing no one else from the gang recognized him in that ridiculous wig. Just how angry was my dear kinsman?"

"Quite intensely angry. And also something else. Horrified, I would say. Also quite intensely."

"Ah. Then I think I know what transpired, though it's a bit of a mystery how. Coco must have finally out of him a promise he's wanted for ages."

"What?"

"That Sacha would escort him to a ball."

* * *

*Abbey of mounting-[the steps]-with-regret – argot for the guillotine.


	63. Ch 60

"Javert? A ball?"

"I know! can you imagine?"

Not even a bit, thought Valjean. But then Moineau continued:

"It would crush him to do this."

"To go to a ball, you mean?"

"No, to take Coco with him if he does. He simply does not trust him enough to take him into someone's house."

"Wait a minute - you are not talking about a public dance?"

"Well, of course not. Why would Coco bash his head against Sacha's resolve for so long to win his company for some public dance? A private ball, naturally."

"How in the world would Javert gain an invitation to such a thing?"

Moineau snorted. "Invitations are a minor concern," he said, or rather mumbled. A long, thin cigarette was now clenched in his teeth, and he kept striking and striking sparks, which kept going out in the nighttime breeze. His hands were evidently unsteady. When the fire was finally lit, Moineau inhaled voluptuously.

"Of the great families residing in Faubourg St. Germain," he continued, "I would venture to say at least two dozen owe Sacha for some service or other rendered to them over the years. He gets invitations regularly. Mostly through mail, but sometimes delivered by hand. He hates those the most, as he never has any spare money to give the messenger a tip."

Valjean briefly imagined a stuffy-faced liveried footman of a duchess, a large, gold-edged envelope in his hand, ascending to Javert's apartment and finding its unshaven and sulky occupant, all six feet of him, sitting by the coquette's dressing mirrors in leather boots and a short workman's vest and carefully applying paint to his eyelashes.

"Coco wants to be escorted by Javert to a private ball given by a titled family?" summed up Valjean incredulously. "On his arm, like a woman?"

Moineau shrugged, then jerked his head to the side, as though overcome by a nervous twitch. "Like anyone else in their situation. If the setting permits it, then perhaps yes, like a woman. If the setting does not permit it, then like a friendly acquaintance. Or do you imagine sods do not attend balls? Or even organize them? That is not what's holding Sacha back. It's that he does not trust Coco to behave himself. Suppose he takes him into a house of some esteemed person, a house he himself gained entry into on basis of some invaluable past service rendered. He would effectively be vouching for Coco as a man of honor, and he considers him nothing of the kind. He thinks it would be perfectly in Coco's nature to pull some shameful stunt or even commit a crime upon some member of that household. Imagine if Coco gets caught with some silver spoons up his sleeve!"

"But why?"

"Why, who knows why?" Moineau took the butt of the cigarette out of his mouth and used it to light another one. "For money, for a mention by name in the society section of the paper, - for revenge, finally." Unwrapping the butt quickly to check for tobacco residue, Moineau dropped the paper tidbit on the ground and inhaled again. He smoked like a habitue, almost shaking with need - or perhaps with nervous energy.

"On Javert?"

"Sure! why not. On Sacha for denying him friendship all these years, on his own changed political fortunes, on the Jesuits, for losing power; on Vidocq, finally. They did not bury the hatchet very deeply." Moineau was muttering ever faster and less distinctly. Valjean got the sense that the evening had put far more of a strain on him than he was willing to let show to his superior and his brother.

"But why ill-use Javert if it's Vidocq he wants revenge on?"

"Because Coco has already tried his best wiles against Vidocq, and he even had a temporary success. And besides, what is there left to take from Vidocq? He is going to be a private citizen soon. Whereas Sacha remains a government agent, and a blow against his reputation would ruin him. This can't help but concern Vidocq, since he is Sacha's master and protector, for better or worse. Always has been, always will be. Sacha declined all opportunities to rise in the police ranks to a magisterial position, so he remains close to Vidocq. If you can't or won't be an officer, then you keep on marching under the sergeant-major."

Moineau fell silent, then added: "Besides, I half think there is a personal history between Coco and my brother. Coco is …odd around him."

"Odd in what respect?"

"More obsequious than usual. As if he expects Sacha to actually rise to some position of power. Which is an absurd bet to hedge, considering that Sacha is far from young, and that Prince Louis… well, considering that the odds of a Bonapartist government being installed any time soon are long to say the least… Unless there is something I really misunderstand about the current state of things. Perhaps Coco knows something I do not. Perhaps Queen Hortense and Prince Louis are planning to make a move, soon, and Coco is counting on Prince Louis to remember Javert especially. It's not as though Coco has any real political inclinations - he inclines according to the changing winds. The Jesuits' pet one day, the Emperor's man the next. Still, like I said - a very long shot. And besides, he's been gravitating towards Sacha for years, I'm told. Before 1830, even. Not sure if a far-off prospect of the return of the Bonapartes explains that."

By now, Valjean had an idea of what could explain such gravitation, but he decided to keep it to himself.

"If Javert already made the promise, can anything release him from it?" he asked quietly, as though talking to himself.

Moineau shrugged again. "I don't see what could. It's not as though Sacha has so many other pressing social obligations. No ill relatives he can count on to provide excuses for his being unavailable, no jealous or prudent spouse to keep him from attending a party. Even his work tends to end at some point in the day or night. Frankly, he's screwed. I wouldn't envy the Devil himself if he had to take Coco out dancing."

He rose and stomped out the cigarette end. "They seem to have quieted down in there. I think it's safe to dive back in. I need to get out of here soon. It's a pity Lecour does not keep night hours in his salle. I feel like getting into a scientific fight. This job is hell on the nerves."

"I'll be in shortly," said Valjean as he rose from the bench as well. "I'll just take a brief stroll to stretch my legs a bit."

"A stroll? What, in circles around the ditch?"

"No, on the grass above," said Valjean and directed his steps towards the stairs cut into the earth.

When he climbed up and out, he found exactly what he expected to find: Marie, sitting close by with his legs crossed like a tailor, peering forlornly into the ditch. The moonlight illuminated a scowl on his pock-marked face. It was plain that he had heard everything.


	64. Ch 61

"I know why you're here," said Marie sulkily without looking at Valjean. "And I will not give in."

Valjean sat down next to him, put his elbows on his knees and leaned into the cool breeze. It was a splendid summer night. He could not recall the last time he allowed himself to sit out on the grass and look at the stars.

"I will not give in!" repeated Marie with more emphasis. "Go on and scowl at me all you want! I don't fear you. I only fear him, Javert!"

In truth, Valjean was not at all scowling but simply trying to think of something diplomatic to say. The last thing he wanted to do was blurt out something that might make Javert's life even more difficult. But now he did scowl. Marie's declaration reminded him of Fantine, who had once thrown almost identical words into his face. Perhaps she had been in love with Javert after all, thought Valjean, bewildered. Perhaps this is what being in love with him does to people.

"This is all so unjust," drawled Marie quietly, still staring straight ahead. "I was sure that this time, finally, maybe I could... My God, where did you even come from? Out of nowhere!.. sprang up from the very ground!.." His face scrunched up. "For fifteen… no, for seventeen years now I've been prostrating myself before him – like a slave! like a dog! And now…"

He exhaled a single pitiful sob. At that moment, a slight change in the direction of the wind carried a cloud of potent fumes towards Valjean's face. Marie-Bartholemy "Coco" Lacour was extremely drunk.

"Seventeen years," repeated Marie, breathing the words out unevenly through clenched teeth. "Nothing to show for it. Failure after failure. It is all the fault of _that Jew!_ He stole him from under my nose before I could so much as blink. No sooner had Javert settled into our company, there _he_ was, dragging him everywhere by the elbow, like he had any right… And then he had the gall to die and take Javert's mind with him to the grave!"

Marie turned his face towards Valjean. Even in the pre-dawn darkness barely illuminated by the light from the tavern, it looked puffy.

"Do you know that I went to Charenton every day for three weeks? They would not let me see him. Not once. It was Vidocq who put him there, to sit in a padded room, straitjacketed like a convict, a priest babbling at him day and night. As if Javert would even listen to one, or cared two figs about religion! Then one day, I come, and they tell me he's gone. What happened to him? I ask. Got better and got discharged, they say. The melancholy mania had dissipated into ordinary unhappiness. I go to the Prefecture. They refuse to talk about him; they show me the door. Bah! As though I were not a detective myself! I found out everything soon enough. Reassigned! To some provincial shit-hole up north! I go to Pas-de-Calais to see him, and he wouldn't give me the time of day. I don't think he even recognized me. _Dame! I_ barely recognized _him_! Those three weeks in Charenton put lines on his face I'd never seen before!"

Marie turned away again to look down at the tavern.

"God, but how I wish I knew what that man did to him. What sort of sorcery... Was it magnetism? mesmerism? some Hebrew witchery? He was a horrible creature. He made one's hairs stand on end. If I believed in demons, he would be the first candidate I'd suspect. An onyx-eyed villain, a smiling butcher. No literary fancy of de Sade's could measure up to what he did every day with a cheerful whistle on his lips. And everyone worshiped him for it! Javert above all - he was blinded, spell-bound... He would not hear a word against his lord and master. As if I couldn't all see the truth on his skin! He was always sporting new bruises, new gashes, new stitches, new plasters! There was no end to them! The two of them would blame everything on his head wound, that it was making him clumsy. Javert called the beast "Doctor Frankenstein" and joked that they will need an electrical machine soon, to reanimate him after he falls to bits, and the good doctor would need to stitch him back together. As though I couldn't guess at the truth - that the good doctor who was forever stitching up his wounds was also the man who kept opening them!"

Valjean said nothing but shivered in the breeze.

"And now he's found you," continued Marie with the same vacant stare into space and renewed disgust in his voice. "Another brute to scare off anyone who dares come near him and then thrash him when you two are alone. What perverse instinct drives him to this debasement? None of you scoundrels deserve to kiss the soles of his feet!"

His breath hitched again.

"I know, I know," he choked out. "Neither am I. He'd never have promised me anything of his own free will. He hates me." Marie sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "And I deserve it. You know how I got him to promise me this? I will tell you. His brother passed a note to a boy. I followed the boy to his house and told Javert the address. I knew the boy was sent by Javert himself. I pretended I didn't. I told him what he already knew, claimed that I took risks in obtaining the intelligence, and made him promise me a handsome reward for it. I have wanted to spend an evening in public with him for so long. He is honest; he agreed. I am a scoundrel."

At this, Marie burst into tears. Valjean tried to recall whether or not he had a pocket handkerchief with him, then remembered that Javert had used it to make a gag for Guelemer.

They sat like this for some time, in silence punctuated with occasional sobs from the despondent agent. Finally, Marie quieted and rose on unsteady legs. Valjean rose as well. He had still not said a word.

"Forgive me all this, Monsieur," said Marie, grasping Valjean's hands. "It is grief talking. It's hard to say farewell to a hope you've cherished for half your life. I only ask one thing of you: be good to him."

The hands around Valjean's tightened with unexpected force. "And if I find out that you were not good to him," continued Marie, suddenly sounding alarmingly sober, "then they will find you on a city rubbish heap with all your guts outside your belly. That much I promise you. I will not stand by idly this time."

Marie released his hands. "As for Javert's promise, I release him from it. Tell him that. And tell him also that if he can find it in his heart to grant me an audience now and again, it would bring me tremendous joy. Which will almost certainly be followed by utter misery, of course. But it would still be worth it."

Watching him walk or rather stumble away, Valjean pondered the awesome and peculiar force of love. What a power it had, even over wicked hearts! What odd things it made men feel! Hadn't he gone through the same see-saw of emotions the night he found Cosette's missive to Marius in her blotter? First you flare up with hatred towards the person who displaced you from your love's heart; then acceptance comes, grudgingly, and on its heels, a new desire to see them both well and happy. In this, at least, he could quite relate to the pitiful creature's plight.

Perhaps this was how you know your love for someone is true, thought Valjean as he descended back into the ditch: when they leave you for another man, and you find yourself wishing both of them happiness, though it wrenches your heart from your chest. Had he not gotten Javert's summoning card in the mail, what would he have been doing for the past couple of days? The same thing as he'd been doing the entire month: carrying baskets of lint made by Cosette to Marius' house, inquiring after him, praying for his recovery. Because Marius was Cosette's beloved now, and they were to live happily ever after, and this was somehow enough.

Or almost enough.

Inside, Vidocq, Javert and Moineau were inspecting the gold coins and tallying them up.

"Where the devil were you?" asked Javert without malice, without looking up, and without releasing a long pencil from his mouth.

"Out sitting on the grass," said Valjean. Then he added: "Next to Coco-Lacour."

Javert groaned and mimed stabbing himself in the eye with the pencil.

"This is not particularly surprising," said Vidocq. "I lead a veritable army here. He'd have had no trouble following us."

"He instructed me to tell you something," said Valjean.

"What?" asked Javert.

"That he retracts his demand."

"He does?" Javert's eyes and voice dared not express delight, or even more than tentative hope.

"Yes. He told me to tell you that he deceived you, and thus you don't owe him anything. He knew all along you had his information already. He said he was a scoundrel for extracting the promise, and he was taking it all back."

"He told you all this?"

"He did."

"In those words?"

"More colorfully, but yes."

"Well, how about that," muttered Javert, then added with suspicion: "A fine long time it took you to hear him out, though. Did you convince him to do this? Come! what did you say to him?"

Valjean sat down across from Javert and picked up a roll of coins to inspect.

"As it happens, not one single word."


	65. Ch 62

"Not a single word, eh? All right, so much for your mouth. What about your fists, did they say anything?"

"I didn't lay a hand on him," said Valjean placidly.

"Care to tell me what this is all about?" asked Vidocq, setting aside a coin.

"Oh, the usual nonsense," said Javert evasively. "Here, take a look at this one. I think it may have been sweated."

He passed a coin down the table. Vidocq picked it up and raised it to the lamp. "What usual nonsense would that be?"

"You know the nonsense. He asked me to take him out someplace full of beautiful ladies and dazzling gentlemen, presumably so that he might nick something beautiful and dazzling from each one in turn and go home stuffed to the gills."

"And you mean to tell me you had agreed?" asked Vidocq, eyebrows high.

"Without knowing what I was agreeing to." Javert rang another coin. "He played me."

"I think you might be misjudging his intentions," said Valjean. "He did lie, but I don't think he had theft in mind. He seems to have genuinely craved your company."

"One does not preclude the other," murmured Javert. A slight blush appeared high on his cheek as he shot a quick glance at Valjean. "Make no mistake, I am quite grateful that you got me out of it. How did you do it?"

"Honestly, I did nothing," said Valjean. "I just sat with him with for a while and listened."

"I bet he wept," said Vidocq. "Did he weep?"

"He did," said Valjean, somewhat deflated. "It sounded quite sincere."

Vidocq snorted and tossed the questionable coin back to Javert. "It always does. Pharaoh, this is a year XII _jaunet_. It's just wear."

"Oh, Coco-Lacour can be _ever_ so sincere," said Javert. "No, this is suspicious wear. Too many of the nicks are contemporaneous. Put it under a jeweler's loupe, you'll see."

"Fine, I'll set it aside," said Vidocq. "Don't change the subject. Why did you agree to take him?"

Javert sighed. "He has been trailing Moineau last night and saw him pass the note to the little Bernard. So he did what one would expect of him: ambushed me as I was going home, told me he had information vital to my brother's life, dragged the promise out of me as payment in advance, and gave me that. Naturally, I already knew about the note, but that did not nullify the promise."

"You idiot."

"I was grasping at straws!"

"Straw-headed idiot."

"I thought he might have had something! Anything at all! I had so little to go on!"

Vidocq pointed an accusatory pencil at his agent, poking the air with it for emphasis with each word. "I told you to leave - Moineau - to - me."

"Would you have gotten here in time?"

"Do you think that I did not? Jeannot, your brother is an idiot," he repeated to Moineau, who was trying to flip a gold coin back and forth between the knuckles of his right hand. "He actually thinks it had been just the five of them here, plus the woman."

"There were more around? Why didn't Babet call them for help?" Javert sounded unsure.

"Oh? does running out and screaming bloody murder not count as a call for help anymore? My mistake."

"How many had there been, then?"

"Everyone below you've met, plus six sentries above you did not meet."

"They followed us here, at some distance," explained Moineau. "Old hands, all of them."

"I had to drop them into my pockets one by one before the two of you got to playing in earnest, so that Babet and Montparnasse would have no back-up," said Vidocq. "Mind you, I had no idea how long I had! Afterwards, I was so worried I might've missed someone that I only watched your performance with one eye."

"Do you mean to say you were all lying there on the grass this whole time and observing us?" exclaimed Valjean. "Without descending to help?"

Vidocq smirked. "Pharaoh was obviously having fun. It seemed a shame to interrupt him."

"Fun?" The horrible scene flashed before Valjean's eyes again: the glinting steel of the gun barrel flush against Javert's white shirt-sleeves, almost sinking into his chest. "You call it fun? He was shot at point-blank!"

"So?" shrugged Vidocq.

"So? What mean you, 'so'? He almost perished! It was a miracle the bullet missed!"

There was silence around the table. Javert said nothing but the tightness around his mouth and the lowered eyes spoke volumes. If anyone knew what guilt looked like on him, it was Valjean.

"There was no miracle, was there?" said Valjean, almost to himself. No one answered. "You knew the whole time, didn't you?" This to Javert.

"Not the whole time," corrected Javert. "Moineau gave me a signal that it was safe right before."

"No miracle, and no bullet either," said Vidocq. "It pays to have a doting brother on the inside. Pistols that might get pointed at you begin to turn up unloaded."

He clapped Moineau on the shoulder, making him drop the coin his was playing with. Moineau cursed and slid under the table.

Something clicked in Valjean's memory. "Is that what happened at the Gorbeau place, too?"

"Of course that's what happened," said Javert gloomily. "You don't imagine me capable of putting enchantments on firearms around me, do you? That time, Moineau had exchanged pistols with Bigrenaille and gave him one with bad priming powder. This time he switched pistols with Babet."

Moineau came up from under the table with the coin in his teeth, pulled the gun in question from behind his belt and placed it on the table with the muzzle carefully pointed towards the cellar door.

"This time was a lot trickier," he said. "I had to do it in secret. Bigrenaille loves a trade up in machinery, so I just offered him a nicer gun. Babet though, he has been carrying this thing around tucked close to his chest all the time, like a holy relic. I barely managed to switch his for mine in time. I think he really did have it blessed by a priest. As a matter of fact, I think he loaded it with silver balls."

Javert side-glanced at the pistol almost with revulsion. "That nonsense again."

"It may be nonsense to you, but they are a superstitious lot. Think of it from their point of view: the only time they got to you was with silver," remarked Vidocq.

"They ought've spared themselves the expense. Shooting a late-stage consumptive in the chest with five silver balls, that's like hunting quail with a Gribeauval cannon."

In Valjean's head, Coco-Lacour's venomous words resounded like the beat of a distant war drum: 'If I believed in demons, he would be the first candidate I'd suspect.'

"Did you ever discover who sent the assassins after Isaac?" he asked.

"We know who it was," said Javert. "That's not the real issue here."

The table went quiet, except for the ringing of coins. Making use of a lull in the conversation, Moineau slipped out, promising to call on Javert late in the morning.

When he was gone and the door behind him shut, Vidocq gave a small sigh.

"Marie did save your life, you know," he said finally in a low voice.

Javert said nothing but rang the next coin against the table with more violence than before.

"Not that it makes what he did honorable," added Vidocq. "But the calculus of it worked out better than it would have the other way around."

"For whom?" asked Javert hungrily. "For him? For you?"

"For you as well. It was you they wanted, and he made it so that you lived. And since he told me right away, all three were caught in a matter of days."

"Yes, everybody gained by it, didn't they?" muttered Javert sarcastically. "Everyone but Isaac."

"Isaac was already at death's door, and Marie wanted you to live. He thought he was doing the right thing."

"Go on then! submit a petition for the Cross on his behalf. What do you want from me?"

Vidocq sighed again. "Put yourself in his position. What would you have done in his stead? His choices were between bad, worse and worst."

Javert pitched himself forward across the table and thrust out his long neck. "_What do you want from me_?" he repeated in a hiss, looking up into Vidocq's face. "My conduct has been _exemplary. _Sometimes, when things get very bad, and the black thoughts are running through my mind, I _marvel _at myself. Even when he found me in Pas-de-Calais that spring, I held my wrath in check. Don't imagine I wasn't tempted! We were alone, no one would have missed him, and I had the kit with Isaac's old scalpels _right there_. It would have been poetically just."

"But not truly just, and you knew it."

"I will never be grateful to him. I don't care if he did save my life. I don't care how little time Isaac had left. It could've been two weeks. It could've been a month. But who knows, it could've been longer! He was a hearty fellow of thirty-five, not some twig of a maiden! Two months, three, half a year - it was worth the world, this miserable sliver of time, both to him and to me! So what if he were dying? We are all dying, some of us just faster than others. The law does not graduate murder by actuarial tables!"

"If Marie had not advised them like he did, both of you would have ended up dead. He changed their plans to have you spared, then went to me straight away to assemble an arrest team."

"Sure! sure sure. Brave little Marie, stumbling into a conspiracy against me, redirecting their wrath towards my soul rather than my body, then rushing to you straight away to report his heroics. That conspiracy was his idea to start with!"

"Javert, it was not. He is not so wicked a man. I believe him."

"Of course, of course. Because how could you not, given how straight and honest he's always been with you? What? No answer? Why not just admit it: Isaac was clinging to life a bit too stubbornly for both your tastes, and this was an opportunity to get him out of the way. As if I didn't know how you both hated him!"

"Come, were we really so wrong about him?"

"Oh, not that old music-box tune again!"

"You were half-dead with him around."

"I would have been entirely dead without him around! You've seen me fall into a fit countless times. Even he's seen me in a fit by now." Javert leaned back in his chair and nodded sideways at Valjean, who sat tensely by his side. "_Pardieu!_ You're a reasonable fellow, Jack, why don't you tell him how I nearly broke my head open against a wall just hours ago?"

"It's true," said Valjean. "He fell right into it. I barely caught him in time."

"See? And he was right there next to me! Isaac was a hospital surgeon, not my personal sick-nurse or my valet. He could not always be at my side. For every time he was there to catch me, there were three times when he was not."

"So he never caused you injury?" Vidocq's voice was low and even, and yet as probing, as though he were a priest conducting a confession.

Javert's face, heavily shadowed by the flickering lamps, became still.

"There were some occasions," he admitted finally. The forefinger of his left hand reached to touch a faint scar on his forehead. "Very few, and most of them quite accidental. Certainly nothing like what you and Marie were imagining between us. _Dame, _'Gene, what of it? So we fought a bit. Couples fight. Between our jobs and my illness, and then his illness, we were a nervous household. But he was a good man."

"He chopped up living people for money."

Javert rolled his eyes. "He was a surgeon."

"He thought himself God Almighty."

Javert shrugged a shoulder."Like I said: a surgeon."

"Do you remember how he used to forbid you to go out on assignments?"

Javert snorted. "Still sore about that time he dragged you down a flight of stairs for trying to wake me? Dame! some grievance, to outlive the perpetrator by a decade. All right, so he was not a pleasant fellow. And yes, he did not like you. Well, he liked me well enough. And I liked him. And even with the occasional brouhaha, we were probably the quietest couple on our block."

He leaned back and stretched with a small smile. "At least when it came to fighting."


	66. Ch 63

Vidocq rolled his eyes and mimed spitting. Some of the electricity went out of the air.

"Why don't you tally up your numbers instead of trying to make me vomit?" he grumbled.

Javert began shifting stacks of coins and making pencil marks. "Want to hear a joke?" he asked and then forged ahead without waiting for a response: "Two London fleas walk out of a pub. One flea says to the other," – Javert affected what he must have considered an English accent – "'What say you, shall we foot it home or hail a _cab_?'"*

Valjean laughed.

"Is that a diplomatic way of hinting that you are ready to hop homeward?" said Vidocq. "I've only got a handful left to ring. How many have you got in total?"

Javert reached for his sheet, taking care not to upset the gleaming coin stacks at his gunpowder-stained elbow. "Ten, twenty, thirty…thirty-nine at ten per stack makes seven thousand eight hundred, plus the three left over, plus four stacks of ten double-napoleons. Two of them rang false, so I'm not including them in the tally yet."

Vidocq examined his own sheet, moving his lips silently, then said. "And I have forty-four stacks of ten, plus six extra, plus two stacks and four extra of double-napoleons. Together that makes…"

"Nineteen thousand three hundred and forty francs. Together with what I have counted, twenty-one thousand seven hundred and twenty," said Valjean.

The men regarded him with surprise. There was no paper in front of Valjean, though there was gold.

"Jolly quick of you," said Vidocq with suspicion. "Pharaoh, check him. That was too quickly done."

Valjean looked sideways at Javert's pencil flying over columns of figures. "It wasn't really _done _so to speak. I don't really _do_ the sums. I just... see them."

"All correct," said Javert and scratched the back of his head with a pencil. "_Tiens! _Say quickly: what's five hundred and twenty-five multiplied by two hundred and seventy-six?"

"One hundred forty-four thousand nine hundred."

Javert leered, showing both rows of teeth. "Famous!"

"Is he right?" asked Vidocq.

"He is."

"How do you know?"

"Trust me, he's right. I know that one by heart."

"Get a load of the Difference Engine!" muttered Vidocq with a touch of resentful awe.

"What's that?" asked Javert without taking his eyes off Valjean. The leer had melted into a wide, almost childishly happy smile.

"It's a machine the English are trying to build," explained Vidocq, "for doing logarithms and navigational reckoning and what-not. A fellow with a funny name just finished putting some of it together. It weighs two tons. One operates it with punch-cards, like a loom."

Javert tilted his chair slowly backwards and cast an appraising look at Valjean. "Two tons sounds about right." Raising his hand, he passed two fingertips along the back of Valjean's neck. "But where is the slot for the punch-cards?"

Valjean felt his face heat up. Javert laughed and dropped his hand. "Where did you hear about that, anyway?"

"It was in the English papers," said Vidocq. "You ought to keep up with world news more."

"Not all of us can lounge around Galignani's all day reading _The Times._" Javert yawned and let his chair fall back on all four legs with a thud. "And anyhow, if the calculation is done through punch-cards, it's not instantaneous. Nor is it done by the machine itself but by direction from its operator. Whereas this is an intrinsic genius of sorts, not mechanical prowess."

"So we have most of the gold," said Vidocq, looking over the stack. "That is good."

"It's the banknotes that we really need to find," remarked Javert. "And the jewelry. A world of work left to be done on this case."

"As the Russians say, work is not a wolf; it won't run off into the forest." Vidocq rose and began rewrapping coins with the pieces of string littering the table and the floor. "Here is what we are going to do. I am going to take the loot to Allard. You are going to go home and not come back into my sight until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. Remember, you have still not been resurrected. It wouldn't do for your corpse to wander the streets in broad daylight. You'll set off a panic in the _tapis francs_. Do you even want to come back to life?"

Javert thought about it. "My name is a good asset. If I were to discard it, I would need prove myself to the criminal world all over again."

"Then I'll initiate 'false body identification' for you."

"Right away?"

"Why wait? You think Babet will not be able to get the word out that you're alive?"

"Why _not_ wait? What do I lose by it? Perhaps he might not manage it from out of solitary confinement. Besides, a little bit of superstitious fear can go a long way with some people. Let me enjoy a few more days of ambiguous existence." Javert added his last stack to the bag. "So you are taking this to Allard now?"

"Yes."

"Have Desmarais accompany you."

"What for?"

"You know well what for."

Vidocq said nothing but pulled on the leather straps of the bag rather harder than was necessary to close it.

"Fume if you like, but take Desmarais anyway," shrugged Javert. "The last thing you need now is intimations of misappropriation."

As they blew out the candles and left the tavern, Javert said: "Incidentally, what do you think of the bag?"

"One can only hope," replied Vidocq mysteriously. "One angry Scotsman is more than enough."

The four men parted ways at the edge of the ditch. A prefecture cab was waiting for Vidocq and the inspector who went with him on the main alley.

"What did he mean about the angry Scotsman?" asked Valjean as they walked home. There were no cabs around, but for all that he was exhausted, Valjean did not mind the walk through the empty gas-lit streets.

"Oh, that! That was a golf bag," said Javert with a little laugh. "For golf clubs. The wooden supports have been broken off it so that it would collapse inwards, see? Otherwise, it would have been too rigid and wide to fit into the hole in the wall."

"Babet stole a golf-bag from a Scotsman?" Valjean felt laughter rising in him as well.

"It's unlikely that it was Babet himself," said Javert. "It was stolen from the carriage. Babet wears many caps, but he's no _roulottier**_. I say it probably went through a fence or two before getting to him. Still, at least now we have something to show Mr. Jameson of Aberdeen, who came around Place du Chatelet not three weeks ago to complain of a robbery perpetrated on him."

"Was he coming to play golf in Paris?" asked Valjean, who had in his heart a susceptibility to the fashion for everything that came from across Pas-de-Calais.

"Not in Paris - in Pau," said Javert. "Apparently, these days the place not only exports Scandinavian royalty but imports British vacationers. Our Jameson has an uncle, an old fellow who had been stationed in Pau as an officer in Wellington's army. And from this uncle he hears so much in way of praise for the local scenery that he packs up his equipment and sets off to give it a swing on the Pyrenees meadows, just like his aged relation used to in 1814. But when the poor fellow gets to Paris, he discovers his luggage missing from the coach rack – everything but the overnight bag he had inside with him!"

"He surmises that it had been insecurely fastened and fell off during the last leg of the journey, when they sped up on approach to Paris – you know how those diligences speed up after their last relay, as if they can thus make up for twenty-four hours of crawl. Our prudent Scotsman had had insurance, so he shows up to the company's Paris office, demanding restitution. The insurance clerk takes a look at the inventory of lost articles. He is horrified. The golf clubs alone would cost a small fortune to replace: an import from the States, custom-made from the best hickory and persimmon wood and only shipped to Jameson just last month! Desperate not to pay out, or at least stall the process, the company directs our Jameson to the police. He is granted an audience with Gisquet. He is given the usual assurance of intense scrutiny to be given to the matter, then also the usual rider that the odds are heavily stacked against the bags ever being recovered, and he is sent on his way again. So the poor fellow goes back to his "abominable rat-hole" of a hotel, – his words, not mine – and complains to the proprietor of the entire story over a whole lot of bad table wine. The proprietor, being of an upright sort that waters their wine and pads their bills only thus far and no farther, suggests that Jameson pay a visit to a little office on Petite Rue St. Anne and engage Monsieur Vidocq's services. Vidocq combs through every fence's shop in the city. He comes up empty-handed. This surprises him. A golf bag should not be that difficult to find in Paris, one would think."

"Except when it's hidden in a wall."

"Precisely. However, as heartening as this is, I hope very much that we might retrieve the actual clubs as well," said Javert. "It was them that poor Jameson was particularly distraught over. Also, the kilt in one of his bags."

"That may be more difficult to find," remarked Valjean.

"Oh, I don't think so. I'd wager it's draped over the skirts of some fishwife at Nouveau Marché au Poisson. We'll restore it to its rightful owner yet – if he'll have it back, that is."

Javert grimaced and held his nose shut briefly between the thumb and the index finger. Valjean laughed, and Javert followed suit. He laughed but rarely, and yet today was different.

It was as though, after many years' absence, laughter was now coming back to him.

* * *

* - **Cab**_ n.m. (abbr. cabot)_: dog

** - **Roulottier** _n.m._ - a thief specializing in stealing mail parcels and luggage from vehicles


	67. Ch 64 final

As they walked, Valjean felt ready to lie down and fall asleep right there on the side of the street, propriety and safety be damned. Javert must have been even more exhausted; occasionally, he would trip over some insignificant unevenness between paving stones and curse under his breath. The first few times, Valjean steadied him; then he put an arm around Javert's waist and let him lean on his shoulder as he walked. Javert did not protest.

To keep both their minds off the long road ahead, they talked.

"There is something I've been meaning to ask you," said Valjean.

"What?"

"How did you come to discover only recently that you had a brother?"

"It was a very strange story," said Javert. "I was already inclined to fatalism, and the events of those days served as my Confirmation of sorts. Do you believe in Fate?"

Valjean thought about it.

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some things certainly seem preordained."

"Some people, as well," remarked Javert.

"What do you mean?"

"That no matter where I find myself, however improbable the place, I can always count on you appearing from around the corner, or walking through a door, or even popping up from the very ground before me. After a while, one even stops being surprised."

"Oh, come now…"

"And it was precisely thus with my brother."

"What? your brother also ambushed you from under a sewer grate?"

"Not far from it, as a matter of fact. The thing happened about seven years ago. I was charged by the prefecture to investigate a brothel where some reports had it that the procuress was supplying her patrons with minors. Not girls of seventeen-sixteen – the morals brigades usually shut their eyes to that. This time, they were children of thirteen or twelve."

"I was explicitly ordered not to confide in Vidocq about the operation. Delavau gave me some vague hints and innuendoes, from which I was clearly supposed to derive that he suspected old Mec of either being one of the patrons, or splitting the profits with the procuress, or secretly being the pimp himself, or something of the sort. There was a fair amount of hemming and hawing, and talking around things, and playing at outraged virtue. I don't know why he bothered – it was perfectly obvious that he just couldn't stand the idea of Vidocq potentially upstaging the Prefecture with a sensational arrest. Besides, I knew Vidocq. The idea that he would buy a woman - - of any age! - in a brothel was ridiculous. He already had more mistresses than he knew what to do with. His dance card was booked months in advance."

"At first, I confess, I was puzzled. Why would Delavau entrust me with this? He and I disliked each other tremendously. Until that point, I had got precious little in way of challenging assignments from him. And now, at a time when so many policemen were being pulled off sensible assignments and towards political espionage, he was giving me this prize of a job? Then it hit me: it was a booby prize. He expected me to fail. More than that, he probably planned on the investigation placing me in some compromising position, so that he would finally have the semblance of justification in dismissing me from the police."

"But of course you went ahead with assignment anyway," said Valjean.

"Well, naturally," replied Javert. "What was I to do? Disclose my suspicions to Delavau's face? Refuse a task that I'd have begged for from a different Prefect? I decided to go through with the investigation - let provocateurs try and catch me in a fault. It'll be time wasted."

"Of course, the other bewildering side of it was that Delavau knew there was absolutely no possibility of my investigating the operation by playing at being carnally interested in the goods the wicked procuress was offering. Not that I am completely incapable of simulating interest with a woman, or even some perverse variant of it with a girl. But my acting skills were worthless in this case; the procuress would never buy it. We were too well acquainted, the two of us. She had been in and out of Saint Lazare for years and years, and my hand had been in a couple of those returns. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, one gets to know one's arresting officer deuced well after a few goes. So not only did she know well that I was abstinent, she also knew that my taste ran altogether to men."

"I decided to reestablish acquaintanceship with her anyway. And imagine my surprise when very soon after our not entirely unfriendly reunion, - she has a bad habit of calling me 'dearie' - I received a note from her inviting me over for a visit. When I showed – in civilian garb, of course, no need to jostle the hornet's nest – she lead me to a back room and confided to me that she had acquired some very special goods.

'What sort of goods?' asked I.

'The kind that will be very much to your taste, monsieur,' she replied.

I made stupid eyes at her. I'm ace at making stupid eyes at women. Saves me from no end of trouble. She bade me wait in the room and left for some minutes, then returned and summoned me upstairs.

'Go to number 3,' she said, handing me a key. 'If you come out of there unhappy, then my name ain't Catherine.'

I turned the key in the lock and walked in. It was dusk already, and there was only a candle stub burning on the night table. Someone was lying in the bed, atop of the sheets, but I couldn't see who.

'You there,' I said. 'Are you waiting for anyone?'

And suddenly I hear this boy's voice chirp back: 'I'm waiting for you, sir.'

My mouth went dry. She gave me a child for the evening! This was fantastic luck. I closed the door, walked to the bed and lifted the candle. And what did I see? A fellow, sure, and a tolerably young one, but nothing even close to a child. He couldn't have been less than twenty-three or twenty-four.

I was so disappointed that I blurted out:

'Damn. I thought you'd be a little boy.'"

"No!" gasped Valjean.

"Yes! And do you know how he replied?"

"How?"

"He punched me in the face!"

Valjean burst out laughing.

"'Ha ha ha' – yes, go on and laugh! I woke up on the bed with a wicked headache. Right across from me sat the not-so-little-boy, looking sullen and contrite; in the corner stood my procuress with a very sour mien, and on the chair next to the bed sat Vidocq.

'Congratulations,' said he, 'to both of you, on a job well botched.'

'What the hell happened?' I asked. My tongue was swollen – apparently, I bit it when I passed out.

'Meet your double,' said Vidocq. 'He was approaching the job from the opposite end, you might say.'"

They turned into Rue Paveé .

"And that is how I met my brother," concluded Javert. "Vidocq and Delavau smashed us together like two _boules_."

"An agent in the Sûreté. You are right, it's a very strange coincidence."

"Actually, he wasn't an agent. He was an under-employed actor. Vidocq had received similar reports about the brothel, so he hired Jeannot to impersonate a _travailleuse _and convinced the procuress to take him on. He'd been at it for only a few days. His virtue was safe enough – the brothel was not known to cater to sodomites, so none showed up there. He had not yet found out anything. But Catherine decided to try her fresh goods out on a customer, so she sent me her little missive. It was all for naught anyway - she never trafficked in children, and all her girls were perfectly on the up and up. A bad tip-off."

"But how did you find out Jeannot was your brother?"

"How do you think? At some point, we introduced ourselves and discovered that we shared a surname. I thought – well, why not? So I tracked down his baptismal certificate. And there it was, black on white: father: Diego Xavier, mother: Jeanne Xavier. Born May 1798, in Paris, baptized in Saint-Sulpice a month later, an infant boy, Jean Xavier. In the world, Jeannot. It all fell together. When I revealed the truth to him, he jumped into my arms."

"Were there any other children in the family?"

"The woman did have an older son, from a previous marriage. Jeannot doted on him when he was little, but the boy grew up sullen and unhappy. He left home early. He is a _commis-voyageur_ now, between England and France. Married to a real pill, but with two adorable children. I met them once or twice. It is a fantastic miracle. I did not even know my father had been to Paris."

"Where did he used to live?"

Javert threw him a strange look.

"Old Xavier? In Toulon, of course."

"You mean..."

"Yes, I do mean. In the _bagne. _He was a horse thief. After being released, he promptly broke his ban and came to Paris - one presumes, with intent to restart his career as a rogue. My mother was long dead; I was already being schooled by some friars, and he did not even know where I was. Jeanne had come to Paris from the provinces, with her little boy in tow. I do not know how they chanced to meet. It was a second marriage for both of them. By all accounts, it was a good match. Jeannot says father had been a cobbler as far back as he recalled, and kept at it until his death. In fact, it was only on his deathbed that he told them he had been a convict and lived in violation of his ban the whole time he was married. The wife categorically did not want to move back to the country. She was a peasant from Brie, like yourself, and something dreadful had happened to her there. My father did not dare tell her why he was not allowed to stay in Paris, for fear that she would abandon him. So he stayed with her and kept his head low for almost fifteen years."

An impossible thought insisted upon itself - one that Valjean had been pushing away ever since seeing Jeannot's eerily familiar face.

"Is she still alive?" asked Valjean with a catch in his throat.

"Indeed she is. A sprightly old woman, very entrepreneurial. Bought a small printing office recently, as a matter of fact. She had started out doing odd jobs in it years ago. When the owner went bankrupt and had to sell the place, she borrowed some money from her eldest son and bought it cheap. Vidocq uses it to print his broadsheets occasionally."

"How strange and wonderful," muttered Valjean. "Ah! my head spins... I do not even know who I'm with anymore, or where I am."

"Well, that's easy," said Javert. "You're with me, and as it happens, we're home."

Indeed, they had arrived at the door of Javert's lodging house.

"I shall sleep for a week," declared Javert, glancing at the door handle. Then he looked at Valjean intently and took a small but audible breath.

"You are welcome to stay over," he said simply.

For a few seconds, a pregnant silence hung in the air.

"I don't snore," said Javert quietly. "I promise."

Valjean looked up at the sky. The moon had come out from behind the clouds, lighting up Javert's gray eyes with silver sparks. Looking into them, Valjean could think of nothing other than how very happy he was at that moment.

"Come, it's late," mumbled Javert. "Give a sign of life already. Aye or nay? _Gy ou ni…?_"

Before Javert had finished the word, Valjean stepped forward and closed the distance between them.

THE END


	68. Chapter 68

Hi everyone!

Man, I can't believe it's been two years since I finished this monster. It's good to see that people are still reading it – I think there is even a translation or two in the works somewhere.

Quick survey: how many of you would like to own a hard copy of this fic, nicely edited and perhaps even illustrated? I'm thinking of printing a very small run, and I want to have enough to go around without overproducing and overpaying.

So! If you think you might be interested in a copy, dear reader, then drop me a PM and answer me these questions three:

1. How many copies do you think you might want?

2. How does $10 per copy sound?

3. What country would I need to ship the book to?

This is basically so I can gauge interest and reckon costs – I'm not taking down any names and orders yet.

Thanks everyone! You've been a fantastic audience. :)

A.m.Z.

* * *

UPDATE: January 25th, 2013

HOLY CRAP SO MANY NEW READERS!

Hello, new readers! Thanks for sticking with Dog-Wolf to the end. :)

I decided to make this thing update itself, because I just added about a chapter's worth of content to chapter 11, and I didn't want to re-number everything. So there we are. I've also been adding random content here and there, and I'll probably keep on editing it for a while as I prepare Dog-Wolf for the hard copy edition - even if the run will only be 30 or 40 copies, I still want them to read well, you know? Given that I'd written it over the course of six years, it's not quite consistent in tone and intent throughout, so I'm trying to even that out a bit without changing much of the action.

Once again, thanks for reading all the way to the end!

A.m.Z.

* * *

Update: April 05, 2013

Hello everyone!

I am uploading this monster to Archive of Our Own, for Reasons, and using the opportunity to add more new content and edit as I go! I'm up to chapter 12, with about 1k new words added so far. Hopefully, within a month there will be a definitive text.

So if you want to read the updated version, follow it on AO3, works/742238


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